


Yggdrasill Dreaming

by Barkour



Series: Barkour sampler [1]
Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Complete, F/M, Gen, Illustrated, Post-Canon, Ragnarok, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 76,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Bifröst is broken and the roads between the worlds are lost; so, too, is the treacherous king Loki lost. Yet in Sif's dreams a shadow walks, and it wears the face of Loki Odinson. Is she going mad, or does Loki yet live? If he does live, then how is she to find him? Through dreams, through memory, Sif seeks Loki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this work does not draw on the comics at all. I've no interest whatsoever in the Marvel universe's interpretation of Ragnarok, so if you're looking for it here, you won't find it. And on a grammatical note, I've opted to use the word "æsir," which is plural, also in the singular, as the proper singular ("áss") is rather ... unfortunate. My apologies for that particular error.
> 
> I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Rawles, who, though she'd her own big bang to write, found time enough to beta read this monster. Without her grammatical know-how and some needed advice re: the ending, this fic would be much the poorer. Thanks are also due in profusion to Phee, one of my favorite artists and an artist whose work always delights, without fail. That she agreed to illustrate this is still astounding to me; at times when I doubted I would ever finish this, I would think of her work and find the motivation to push through. (All artwork is hosted and posted with Phee's permission.)
> 
> As well, thanks to those who cheered me on as I worked on the first draft; your support means the world to me. And thank you, reader, for reading. :)

_i: yggdrasill undreaming._

Yggdrasill, we sing of you. We sing of you, Yggdrasill.

You, who bear all the worlds like fruit upon your branches: we sing of you. You, who hold all the universes as leaves like to and unlike each other: we sing of you. You, whose trunk rises endlessly through space and time, shadows and light, on into the vast nothingness which as yet waits for your foretold winter: we sing of you. You, whose roots draw from the well Mímisbrunnr, in which waters wisdom floats, and from the well Urðarbrunnr, where the three norns Urðr and Verðandi and Skuld weave their threads, and from the well Hvergelmir, where Níðhöggr the wyrm eats at your bark: we sing of you. You, who carry dreams and do not yourself dream: we sing of you.

Yggdrasill is mighty! From a seed in the days before thought Yggdrasill has grown; in the days after thought, Yggdrasill shall wither. Yggdrasill is without end, yet Yggdrasill must end. Yggdrasill cannot be brought down, yet Yggdrasill must fall. Yggdrasill knows no season out of spring, yet Yggdrasill must bow to winter. We are all of us bound to what comes at the end of days, when the world falls to fire and sleeps in ice. Even the mighty Yggdrasill, tree and gallows and steed, must fall. Out of Yggdrasill will rise Yggdrasill. Out of nothing will rise life. Circles beget circles. Ash to ash, seed to seed.

Yggdrasill, we sing to you. We sing to you, Yggdrasill.

You, who dwell alone, tree without trees: we sing to you. You, who begat yourself, Yggdrasill from Yggdrasill: we sing to you. You, who feed the serpents Góinn and Móinn and Grábakr and Grafvölluðr and Ófnir and Sváfnir and more innumerable and unnamed, Yggdrasill the suffering: we sing to you. You, who feed, too, the stags Dáinn and Dvalinn and Duneyrr and Duraþrór, Yggdrasill the giving: we sing to you. You, whom the three norns Urðr and Verðandi and Skuld tend to with the holy waters of the well Urðarbrunnr, Yggdrasill the renewed: we sing to you. You, who do not sleep, Yggdrasill undreaming: we sing to you.

Yggdrasill the watchful! From a seed in the days before thought Yggdrasill has grown and never known rest. Yggdrasill suffers for the biting of serpents which twine about Yggdrasill's roots and the feasting of stags which wander Yggdrasill's vast branches, and in its suffering Yggdrasill is without peace. Yggdrasill, to you we sing: Would you take your rest? Would you dream if you might? Undreaming Yggdrasill, of what would you dream if you would dream? Perhaps the stars like dew on your leaves or the worlds you bear. Perhaps Yggdrasill would dream of the fire which waits, which will see Yggdrasill burnt to ash and the holy wells made empty. Would Yggdrasill, alone, dream of deep forests and leaves so thick as to hide the sun?

O, Yggdrasill, hear our song. Hear our song, O, Yggdrasill.

Do you hear, Yggdrasill? Do you hear the Bifröst, how it screams, how it weeps? The bridge is broken, the way lost. Now Goðheimr, which bears Asgard, stands alone. Álfheimr stands alone. Svartálfaheimr stands alone. Vanaheimr stands alone. Manheimr stands alone. Jötunheimr stands alone. Múspellsheimr stands alone. Niflheimr stands alone. Helheimr stands alone.

In Múspellsheimr, they will soon wake. Soon Múspell's sons will wake. Soon their fires will wake. The Bifröst is lost. Loki World-killer falls. The end comes. Do you hear, Yggdrasill? Yggdrasill, do you hear?

Yggdrasill, we sing of you. Yggdrasill, we sing to you. We give our songs to Yggdrasill. We give our dreams. We give our tongues, our hearts, the water from our flesh.

Yggdrasill, we sing.




 

 _ii: odinson lost._

From Asgard wondrous, he fell.

The Bifröst cried about him for its breaking, and a terrible screaming rose out of the farthest reaches of the universe. He could not hear it for the shouting in his head. Second son, unwanted son, stolen and unloved. A babe weeping in a temple and taken up by a king, claimed as his own and then forgotten, the superfluous shadow to Thor, beloved Thor, wanted Thor, Thor son of Odin and Loki tool of Odin.

"There's always a purpose to everything your father does," said Frigg, mother, not mother. Her hair as gold as Thor's. Frigg had brushed Loki's hair for him when he was young, drawing out the knots as she would tangles from her loom. Frigg, who had called him her little raven for the blackness of his hair.

What meaning Loki? What purpose granted him? Taken and made pale, made æsir, raised in the house of Odin as his son. Why? What meaning? What purpose? To be made a king of Jötunheim who would bow to Odin. Jötunheim, which Odin had broken. Jötunheim, which Odin had taught his sons to hate and fear. Jötunheim, realm of monsters, of frost and silence and death.

He would have destroyed it, Loki Odinson, seen it made hollow, seen it made dead, the monsters slain that Odin would know him not as the jötunn child he had found crying in an empty place and taken him as a relic to be used, but as his own, his son, beloved as Thor firstborn and sun-bright, Thor loved above all others. Killed them all and held their blood in his hands up to Odin Jötunn-slayer and asked him, "Am I not your son? Was this not my purpose?" as Jötunheim burned.

The Bifröst broke, shattered, felled by the hand of Thor that Jötunheim would live. The ways of Yggdrasill were known to Loki, the unseen paths and forgotten channels it held in its branches where the four heavenly stags roamed and ate the dying worlds. Mighty Yggdrasill he had walked as a child. Of Yggdrasill's secrets he had learned many. He closed his mind to the great tree. He closed his eyes. He closed his heart. He closed his ears and his mouth and his throat, and his silvertongue was still.

Out of the heavens, Loki fell.




 

 _iii: memory: loki._

Afternoon had come. A strong breeze blew in through the opened windows and set his mother's drapes to rolling. Loki studied the shadows as they moved across the floor. He thought of stories for them, great adventures in which he featured prominently, and kicked his legs out to see his own shadow join the rest.

"Hold still," said Frigg, amused. She steadied him upon her lap. "Don't fly away just yet, little raven."

His mother's fingers touched his nape, urging him to cease his struggles. The silver comb drew through his wetted hair; its teeth pricked his skin. Loki hooked his ankles together and tried to be still.

"I'm not a raven," he said. "I'm a boy."

"Oh?" asked his mother. "What difference is there?"

He thought on this and said: "Ravens are birds."

The teeth snagged on a tangle. Loki gasped loudly and cringed back against Frigg, as if mortally wounded. Laughing, she set the comb aside and worked instead with her fingers. Her shoulder moved beneath his head.

"Ravens _are_ birds," she said as she picked a curl free of the knot, "and boys aren't birds. Are you sure you're a boy?"

"I can't be a bird," he reasoned. He held his arms up for her to see. "I don't have wings."

"Perhaps you've hidden them."

He smiled at this. "I cut them off and put them under my bed."

"Yes," she said, "where no one will ever find them."

Loki leaned forward and turned to look up at her. His mother was smiling. Her eyes creased. Lightly she brushed a strand of hair from his brow. He was hot still from his bath, and his skin was damp even in his dry clothes. A bead of water, disturbed by Frigg's hand, traced his nose.

"One day," he told her, "I'll put them on again and fly away."

Frigg rounded her eyes. "Oh, but perhaps I'll find them. Then you'll have to stay and be my little raven forevermore."

He settled again. She carded her fingers through his hair, petting.

"Will you give me shiny things?" he asked her. "Pins and gems and pretty rocks."

"If I don't, you'll steal them from me," she said archly, "because you're a greedy little raven."

"Like Huginn and Muninn," said Loki, thinking of his father's ravens with their sleek feathers and their unblinking eyes. He'd taken Thor's lunch the other day and told him Huginn had flown off with it. Muninn had done as much to Loki once.

"Oh, but Huginn and Muninn must fly over the fields of war," said his mother, "but Frigg's raven must not. What should he do?"

"He'll bring her gold from a dragon's nest," said Loki. "And fists full of jewels, and a crown of diamonds, and a silver horn from a unicorn so she'll never be sick, and—"

His mother cut him off. Her arms wound about him; she held him to her breast. Loki struggled then gave, for his mother's love was great and her arms strong about his chest. She kissed his brow. Her lips were soft, her touch light. Love for his mother came easily to him.

"All I'll ask of my raven," she whispered, "is that he stay still when I brush his hair."

"Only if you give me a pin," said Loki.

His mother straightened. "Greedy Loki," she admonished, but when she had finished brushing his hair, she drew a hairpin from her basket and clipped it in his black curls.




 

 _iv: witness, three._

At Yggdrasill's crown, the eagle stirred, and as it stirred, so, too, stirred the hawk Veðrfölnir which slept between the eagle's eyes.

"What?" asked Veðrfölnir, in ill humor. "What is it?"

"I see," said the eagle.

"As do I," snapped Veðrfölnir. "I have eyes. You have eyes. We all have eyes. Will you let me rest but half a day without disturbing me? Who is it who has to fly around all the worlds? Is it you? No. It's me. And what do I get from you? 'I see.'"

"Hush now," said the eagle.

Veðrfölnir ruffled her throat feathers. "Hush? Hush! You're the one who started talking, and don't you forget."

The eagle shook her head and Veðrfölnir rocked dangerously close to falling off and plummeting down into the thick clouds which ringed Yggdrasill. Veðrfölnir shrieked and would have dug her claws into the eagle's eyes—and serve her right, it would, going on about "I see," as if she were just a chick—had the eagle not then stilled.

"Look," said the eagle.

"I don't know what you want me to look at," said Veðrfölnir. "All I see are the stars, same as ever, very bright, lots of them—"

Then she stopped, for a small shadow passed over the stars and ringed about it were shards of ever-changing light, like pieces of a broken rainbow. Veðrfölnir's forefeathers stood on end.

"What in the fuck?" asked Veðrfölnir.

"Loki Laufeyson," said the eagle. "Loki Odinson. The Bifröst has broken. He falls with it."

"The fuck it has!" said Veðrfölnir. "The Bifröst can't be broken. The bridge is eternal."

"It has broken," said the eagle again. "Feel. Yggdrasill wakes."

Veðrfölnir craned her neck about to see. All about them the topmost branches of Yggdrasill shivered. Her great leaves trembled. A terrible feeling Veðrfölnir did not recognize swelled within her; in a moment she knew it as fear. Never before had Veðrfölnir known Yggdrasill to rouse.

"What does it mean?" she asked.

"I do not know," said the eagle, who knew all things.

An agitated chittering rose from the near branches, then out of the leaves leapt Ratatoskr the squirrel, grown enormous in his distress. His fur bushed out wildly. He scrambled up to the eagle's nest and said:

"What's got the old tree stirring? I nearly fell off."

"You did not," said the eagle placidly.

"Well, I might have," said Ratatoskr. Then he looked to the stars and to the shadow drawing ever nearer to Yggdrasill. "What in all her lovely roots is that?"

"Fuck if I know," said Veðrfölnir. "The eagle says it's Loki, son of Laufey, son of Odin. She also says the Bifröst has broken."

Ratatoskr did not laugh at this, as Veðrfölnir hoped he would. His fur, which had begun to settle, stood up again, and he turned his wide eyes on the eagle who said:

"It is true."

"Oh, shit," said Ratatoskr.




 

 _v: memory: loki._

In the little thicket outside the palace there was a tree that had fallen, brought low by lightning years before. The beasts had hollowed it out, and the insects had done their work, and no one else knew of it but Loki, which was precisely how he wanted it.

It had taken absolute ages to get all the charms right. He'd had to look them all up and learn them and figure out how to cast them, and _then_ he'd had to figure out how to cast them on something that had once lived but now was dead—charms for silence, stillness, sight and sound and smell, a charm to keep it dry, a charm to keep it cool, a charm to keep it from rotting away, a charm to keep the crawlies out, a charm to keep the bigger things out.

What it all amounted to was a great deal of effort for a hideaway he'd outgrow one day (he hoped; oh, how he wanted to be tall), but Loki liked to be thorough. If nothing else, at least it represented one place Sif couldn't find him. There were loads of places he could hide, of course, all sorts of clever places, but he hadn't quite got the knack of charming himself invisible yet, and Sif was so good at sniffing him out he thought perhaps he'd made a mistake when he called her "horse" instead of "hound." It was that long nose of hers.

Probably she was part-wolf. Sliding feet first into the dank, chilled hollow, Loki resolved to tell her so at the right moment. She'd hit him for it, but she'd have to catch him first. His tunic caught on a knot. Loki tugged it free and turned onto his belly. His shoulder scraped the top of the trunk. The noise of his breathing filled the hollow; it rebounded off the curves. Habit made him calm it.

Sif broke into the clearing then. She was quiet, oh, so very quiet, but Loki was quieter. He grinned and wriggled forward on his arms till his nose nearly peeked out of his shelter. He wanted to see her face when she knew she'd lost him.

She didn't breathe half so hard as he had. Her head was turned the other way, her chin raised: she looked to the branches above. The long fall of her hair intersected with her throat and tumbled in a tangle over her shoulder, which was bare and summer-dark and slicked with sweat. She'd chased him quite a ways before he'd managed to lead her back around to the woods.

Sif turned, searching. Her lips thinned. The skin beneath her nose glimmered, sweat-bright. Absently she ran her thumb across it. Loki's belly tightened. He softened his breath, slowed his heart.

Her feet were naked. She walked easily through the leaves, the grass, the twigs scattered here and there like traps beneath the green. Her ankles were bony knobs, but her calves where they showed under her rolled-up trousers were leanly muscled. Her thighs, too, a suggestion as she pivoted on her heel, and her trousers pulled taut across her hips, legs. Very, very dangerous.

Such a good thing he'd thought of the tree. Sif was far too clever to be chasing after Loki. Her shadow fell before the hollow; she neared. If he hadn't his tricks, she might even catch him. His shoulders ached. His palms itched. He rubbed his right hand over the wood, soothing, and his skin rasped lightly across it.

Sif dropped into a walking crouch before the hollow. Loki froze up. She couldn't possibly have heard. He'd laid another charm only the month before. She walked forward on her toes and bent to look into the emptied trunk, emptied but for Loki.

The clearing was a small one, and the trees that ringed it held their branches out across it. Shadows fell thickly, even with the summer sun high in the sky. Sif's eyes showed brown, and her pupils were huge, black, ink dropped in the center of each iris. She stared directly at him. How long her nose, he thought.

In a moment she would reach in and hook her fingers in his collar and drag him out. He would kick, claw at her, shout every curse he knew, and still he would be caught. His heart trembled ferociously. Already he could feel her fingers at his throat, her palms on his shoulders. He'd been hunted; he'd been found. The tightening in his belly made his head swim. Sif looked on him. He was caught.

Her mouth creased; Sif frowned. He could not think why; then she muttered, "Damn," and slapped her hand on the trunk. The sound reverberated as if the tree were truly hollow. She rose. Sif passed out of sight, then out of the clearing. She hunted him still.

His heartbeat was deafening; it stormed in his ears. She hadn't heard him. She hadn't seen him. And of course she hadn't. Was Loki not the most gifted pupil the master of sorcery had ever seen? He had said so to Father the week before, and Father had looked to Loki then asked of Thor. Thor had no head for magic.

Best to stay put, Loki thought. She would come back again. Sif was always thorough when she sought a thing. Tenacious. Another thing she'd in common with a hound. He put that one away, too.

His heart had calmed some, but it skipped oddly now and then in his chest. Loki folded his arms and rested his head in his elbow. He wished he hadn't worn sleeves. Sif had the right idea.

She had looked right at him. Looked at him, but hadn't seen him.

"Safe," he whispered. His voice fell flat, muffled by his spells. If Sif had pressed her ear to the trunk at that very moment, she would have heard nothing at all. That was what he wanted. His chest hurt. He didn't like to think of it.

Loki stayed there in the hollow in the thicket until the sun sank low and the afternoon cooled. Then he slithered out of the tree, and shaking the dirt from his trousers, he ran silently up to the palace. He ran alone. Only his shadow chased him, and that could never catch him.





	2. 2.

_i: sif sleeping._

Sif slept. As she slept, she dreamt of Loki. 

In her dream they were as children again, and they played as children would in the forest. The trees towered vast and endlessly above them, their branches so weighted with leaves as to take the light from the day. Darkling glimmers showed them paths through the woods, long and winding paths which twisted about the trees and crossed each other again and again.

mj 

Loki leapt over a fallen tree as if it were only a stick. Leaves whispered beneath his toes. In the landing, he turned to her. He smiled brightly.

"Would you like to play a game?"

Sif grunted. She'd her foot on the trunk, her hands on the curve before her. The wood was soft, rotting; bits of tree crumbled away under her fingers. A sickly sweet scent engulfed her. The force of it made her head swim. There were dead things here.

She came down in a crouch, knees bent, her arms spread out from her sides. Loki was a shadow at her side. The trees had thickened, drawn closer together. In the deepening gloom, his face showed as a ghostly collection of angles and long lines. She could not make out his eyes.

"Let's play hide and seek," he said. "Won't that be fun?"

"What are you talking about? Look around,” she demanded. “We need to go home before it's too dark."

She thought perhaps he smiled. Perhaps he laughed.

"Coward," he taunted. "Little stumbling foal. Frightened of your own shadow."

"I'm not a coward! Swallow your tongue!"

She took a step toward him, but he was gone; there was nothing there but another tall tree rising from its twisted roots. Sif felt the face of it, the channels, the wrinkles. That sweet smell flooded her mouth, her throat. She turned about it. The forest was darker still. What light showed between the leaves so densely woven above was thin, like that of evening. But it was morn; she knew that.

"Loki," she said. "Loki! Where are you? We have to go! This place isn't right."

"I can't tell you where I am," he said. His voice came at her from the trees, from the roots beneath her feet, from the blackness between the trees. "That wouldn't be much of a game, would it?"

"I don't want to play games with you! I want to go home," she said.

"Then go."

Her breath came wildly. The trees ringed her, dark sentinels. She turned on her heel. The path had gone. The stink of rot filled her, made her stomach flip.

"No," she said. "I won't go without you. Loki, please. Where are you?"

A hand caught her shoulder. She rounded, fists raised, but it was Loki—Loki as she did not know him. He was older. Lines framed his nose, his pale eyes. The corners of his mouth dragged. She could not turn from his eyes, his awful, bruised eyes.

"Go home," he said.

"What's happened to you?"

She tried for his hand, his wrist. He drew away from her. His fingers passed through hers as if he were spun of fog. The trees folded about him, like a shroud.

"Loki! Please, wherever it is you're going, you don't have to go."

"I've already gone," he said. "Don't go looking for me. You won't find me. I was always best at these games. Have you forgotten?"

"How am I supposed to go home without you?" she shouted. "What—" She cast about and could not find him. "What will I tell Thor?"

"Your confidences with Thor are your own," said Loki savagely. "Tell him whatever you would tell him. Tell him he needn't concern himself with his little brother."

"Loki," she pleaded, "please, what's wrong? Where are you?"

Sif turned round and round. The forest tightened about her. The last flicker of light from above vanished, and she was alone in the dark.

Then: light blossomed at her feet. She fell back and smashed into a nearing tree. Like bubbles blown from a handful of soap or marbles thrown into the air, little round balls of light showed in the tangled network of roots. They rose, one by one, and as they rose that smell of death magnified. Sif clamped her hands to her mouth and stepped as high as she could on the roots, as far from the rising sea of brilliant, winking bubbles as she could get.

The tree shivered at her back. As with the undulation of the sea, it surged and withdrew. Sif stumbled and fell hard upon her knees and hands. Those strange lights surrounded her. A bubble caught in her hair and she heard, as from a distance, a little voice singing of death and the devouring fires; then the bubble popped.

Sif woke.

Her room was dark, lit only with the glow of Asgard through the window. A suggestion of gold shimmered over the ceiling. She breathed in deeply, then she turned, coughing, onto her side. A cloying stench filled her nose and mouth; the taste of it clawed at her tongue.

She struggled with her sheets, kicking them away. Her heart beat cruelly, hard against her ribs as if to break them. The night swallowed her. The room was swollen with summer, thick with the weight of coming rain.

Of what had she dreamt?

An impression of darkness, of unbearable loneliness, swept over her. Sif touched her brow and thought of trees, of fireflies and the night around her. Of Loki's face, worn so thin.

Movement, at the corner of her eye. She turned, grabbing for the knife beneath her pillow. In the mirror opposite her bed she saw herself, dark-haired, face pale, her eyes wide and wild.

A pale figure walked in the corner of the mirror, and she thought, Loki. But it was only the curtain loosed from its ties, fluttering as the summer wind drove it on in sinuous waves.

The hilt of her knife dug into her palm. Her finger rested on the blade. Her heart would not stop its shouting.

Sif let go of the knife. The curtain whispered, twisting about itself, fluttering on and on in the mirror. She covered her face.

"Stop," she whispered harshly. "Enough of this. You are acting like a child."

He had gone. He had gone. He was dead; he was lost. Who was she to see Loki in her mirror at so late an hour of the night?

Sif drew her hands down her face. She had dreamt like so before. Sleep would evade her for long and restless hours, as her mind grew strange with unwanted thoughts and slow with doubt. The corners of her room held no thing that would justify laying in her bed, watching shadows couple and split upon the ceiling.

She dressed in darkness in old leathers and cloth and slipped the knife into her belt. The yards would be forgotten at this hour. If she chose to train, to burn every thought from her head till she fell, emptied, onto her bed again, then she would do so. Even better if she'd no company whose questions she would need entertain.




 

_ii: asgard mourning._

Asgard mourned, and Asgard did not mourn. Thor had ever been her most beloved son and Loki had won few friends. What did they say of Loki, who had been king as Odin slept near to death and Thor, Odin's heir, wandered distant Midgard? They said, he was half-mad, Loki, too clever for his own good. Hadn't he always been so? Ever playing tricks to show he could and never caring who got in his way, they said. What terrible trick had he pulled to break the Bifröst, to sever Asgard from all the realms? 

The king would not say. The queen would not say. Their son, Thor, would not say. The house of Odin would not speak in its grief. Sif thought perhaps it was for the knowing there were those in Asgard who would not have looked on the purging of Jötunheim as an ill thing. And would Sif have stopped him? Would she have stayed Loki's hand as Thor had stayed it? "Do as you're told," her father had said to her when she was young and foolish, "or else the jötnar will eat you."

She would not think of it.

"What I don't understand is why no one will talk of it," said Fandral.

They had gathered in one of the lesser chambers of the palace, Sif and the Warriors Three. Soft light glowed out of the walls, casting red shadows where it shone off the gold. The room was strange without Loki standing as he would stand apart from them, his black coat falling about his knees.

Sif turned her back upon the thought of him. The leather at her shoulders groaned as she crossed her arms and then uncrossed them. A nervous sort of energy ran through her. She could not turn her mind from the mirror in her room, from the little flicker she had seen, as of a ghost passing through. But it was only a curtain, and she was a fool to dwell upon it. Cast it out, she thought. Think no more of it.

"And what is it no one will talk of?" asked Volstagg. His fingers gleamed with grease. A little pile of bones weighted his plate. His eyes shone keenly.

Fandral gestured impatiently, as if with a blade. He paced as he did at times when he thought things which worried him. Hogun, ever watchful, followed him about the room with his eyes.

"Loki," said Fandral.

The name filled the room, and Volstagg set down the length of pork rib to look at him. Fandral turned on his heel. He looked to Sif, Volstagg, Hogun.

"They never speak of him. They won't even make a story for the people. They act as if he never existed."

"Don't say that," Sif snapped. Her legs itched, down beneath the skin, in the bones. Restless, that's what it was. Her head ached for lack of sleep. A pale thing, fluttering at the corner of her eye. "You've seen how they mourn him."

"I've seen how they refuse to talk of him," said Fandral, "as if that will somehow undo everything he tried to do. He would have killed Thor! He would have killed us. Because of him the Bifröst is lost, and now all Thor does is watch the stars and think of his lost lady love."

"Thor mourns his brother," said Sif coldly. "You know it as well as I do. He loved Loki."

Fandral laughed, as sharp as one of his swords. He dragged a hand through his hair, for once unmindful of how it disheveled him.

"Loki did not love Thor. He could not have loved him," he said again. "Why else would he have tried to kill him?"

Sif shook her head. Her hair fell across her throat. "No. Loki loved him. But he was always so jealous," she said.

"Perhaps the rumor is right," said Hogun then. He looked to them. "Perhaps Loki was mad."

She shook her head again. The pressure behind her eyes redoubled. She itched all over for her stillness. She ached to run, to fight, to quiet her whispering mind, to do something instead of standing there in that room talking of Loki lost, Loki dead.

"He wasn't mad," she said shortly. "Loki was many things, but he was never mad."

"How can you say he was not mad?" Fandral demanded. "When he sent the sentinel to Midgard to kill his brother? When you might have died because of Loki's madness?"

Her teeth hurt. She unclenched her jaw and her hands as well. She did not know why she had wanted so badly to strike Fandral across his face, to see him laid out upon the floor and hear him silent.

"I know full well I might have died," she shot. Hot sun on her face, a rib cracked, her sword lost—she had known death then, in that moment as the sentinel bore upon her. "And if Loki were here, I would be the first to take my measure from his hide. But he isn't here. He's dead."

Fandral's gaze dropped. Sif’s breath came hard in her chest, too thick in her throat. She turned away.

In the silence, Volstagg said, "Whether he was mad or not, and though he did try to kill us, I shall miss his jokes."

"I must go," Sif said abruptly. Air made her dizzy, unsteady on her feet.

"So soon?" asked Volstagg, surprised. "You've only just got here."

"I'm feeling unwell," she said.

She bowed her head to them in thanks for their company, then she took her leave of that room, that empty, shining room. Her footsteps echoed in her wake, catching in the ridged walls, hiding in the vaults. In a little corner at the end of a long corridor she leaned against the wall and covered her face with her hands. She did not know why it hurt so. He had been her friend, and she supposed that was it. That was enough.

He had been her friend.




 

_iii: memory: sif._   


Sif fell to her knee and slid into what small shelter the fallen pillar offered her. She trusted the poor light and this disorder of the ruins to shield her. A throbbing pain drove up her hip and down again to her calf; blood colored her shorn trousers, blood from a thick gash parting her thigh. She levered herself upright and slammed her back to the pillar as Loki slid in from the other end. 

Their shoulders knocked. Sif glanced at him then down again to her leg. She grimaced. The wound ran deeper than she'd thought. She set to tearing the cloth from her leg.

Loki's arm pressed to her shoulder. Breathless, he said, "Fancy seeing you here. And how are you enjoying the party?"

"I only wish we'd got here sooner," she said. She wiped the ichor off her lance with her sleeve. "Did you see how many there were?"

"Eight and four remain," he reported, "but one of them has a horn. We should expect reinforcements."

She made to look around the pillar, but a knot in her side drew her short. She'd have a monster of a bruise all down her right side from the blow that troll had delivered her, and she imagined throwing herself to the ground as she had had done her no favors.

"Where in the hell is Thor?"

"He'll be here," said Loki.

"I know he'll be here," Sif snapped. "I want to know when he'll be here."

"No doubt he's busy tearing the mother to bloody shreds," Loki said soothingly. "He won't have abandoned us to die."

Sif eyed him over her shoulder. He'd dark ichor smeared down the side of his face, from his temple to the corner of his mouth. His face was pale, bruises showing beneath his eyes. How much magic had he used to hold the main party off?

"You don't sound so certain," she said.

"Oh?" He tried for levity. His throat worked. "I never doubt Thor. He is the last person I would ever doubt; he's so painfully, obviously honest about everything."

"If you're having some sort of jealous fit," Sif said, "while twelve trolls search for us and more come, then I will tear your tongue out and feed it to you."

Loki looked at her and whatever shadow had filled his face passed. His bruised eyes lidded. The bloodied corner of his mouth twitched up.

"Sif," he said in a mocking low, wondering tone, "I didn't know you cared. How shocking. Is this really the place?"

"I'm bleeding out, you idiot," she said. "If ever there were a time and place for your games, this is neither."

"Who's playing?" he demanded, but he left off.

His gaze lowered. His hair, normally so carefully slicked, stuck up in dark and curling tufts. Ichor gleamed wetly at his crown. He'd driven one of his knives up through the jaw of one particularly large troll, she remembered. She'd turned to help him, then one of the troll's fellows had brought its claws down upon her leg.

"Sif," he said. She couldn't place his tone, then he looked up at her again. His mouth was a hard, furious line. "How did this happen?"

"I fell into a cloud," she said.

He touched her leg, his fingers framing the torn flesh, and Sif hissed. Her toes curled painfully in her boots. Blood welled again, red on his pale fingers, and as her toes flexed she saw an answering tightness deep within that cut. She felt ill and yet, it was mesmerizing to see how the muscles drew taut even as she bled.

A terrible horn blew out in the ruins, nearer now than before. In the distance, another horn called out. A shouting rose. Sif hefted her lance and shifted her weight as if to stand.

"We should go."

Loki grabbed for her shoulder and pulled her down again. The fingers at her thigh had curled, digging into her skin. Sif cursed.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"You aren't going anywhere until I've stopped the bleeding," Loki snapped at her. "Unless you want to die ignobly at the hands of a gibbering troll. Is that it? Is that how the great warrior Sif intends to die?"

"I don't intend to die!" She tried to pull away but his hand at her shoulder was peculiarly strong, and he held her there. "I intend to kill them all before they kill us, which they will if we don't move."

"Self-sacrifice is the last resort of fools," said Loki. "I presumed you weren't a fool but perhaps I was wrong. You can't put weight on this leg, and at the rate you're losing blood—"

"Fine!" she snarled. Her knees rose—instinct told her to stand that she might show herself larger than him—then she swore again at the cold-hot fire that ran up her leg. Sif knocked her head on the pillar. She glared at Loki. "Stop the bleeding. Then we move."

"I live to serve," he said.

Then he took his hand from her shoulder and set it on the other side of the gash, mirroring the hand already spread upon her thigh. For a moment she thought of rising, then she saw how her blood painted his hands, his wrists. His cuffs were soaked with it, the dark green near to black. She stilled.

His fingers fanned wide. Gently, he stroked the edges of the cut with his thumbs. A curious tingling began where his thumbs touched her, then the lingering, driving pain faded to a distant ache, like that of a weeks old bruise all but healed. Loki bent his head to her bared thigh. She felt his breath, cold, on her skin.

Then: the breath tore out of her. Her chest felt as if someone had struck her; she felt both incredibly empty and terribly full. Her thigh itched so she could hardly think. She wished he would turn his nails to her skin.

"There," said Loki. He lifted his head. "That should hold you until we can take you to the healing chambers."

He brushed his hand over her thigh, sweeping blood from her skin. The gash had closed. Her skin puckered, a furious red pinched together and told to stay as so. He glanced to her, assessing. The circles beneath his eyes had darkened.

"Thank you," she said.

Loki inclined his head. He looked over his shoulder then and said, "Thor should have been here."

"He'll be here," said Sif. "You know he will. Do you have your knives?"

"Always," said Loki absently. "Have you your lance?"

"And my sword," she said. "How many do you think you can take?"

"More than you," said Loki.

Sif snorted at this. Setting her hand on the pillar and digging her lance into the ground, she forced herself upright. Her leg complained but held beneath her. Loki stood with her, his coat unfurling like a shadow. He held his shoulder carefully. He looked at her and smiled.

"What a pair we make," he said.

"Don't start," said Sif.

She swung her lance up and twisted the handle so the blade extended farther still. At her side Loki brushed his hands down his sleeves as if to smooth the wrinkles from them. Her blood stained his wrists.

"Ready?" she asked him.

He dropped his hands and two pale knives glittered between his fingers, one in each hand.

"Close enough," he said.

Sif nodded then turned and sprinted out from cover. Four trolls scattered throughout the dank and barren ruins turned; another three loped from a close corner. Like her shadow, Loki followed her out from the other side. His arm rose; he drew it back; a shining projectile flew from his fingers and caught the nearest troll in the throat. Sif darted for it and sinking low, she drove her lance up into its gut. The troll choked and spat ichor on her face, then it fell toward her.

Loki caught her wrist and drew her free, and Sif turned her hand to catch his wrist in turn. She slung him round to face another troll, bearing down from the heights of the ancient, ruined hall. Loki threw another knife, this one biting deep into the creature's thigh, and spun about that Sif might cut it across the throat.

They'd felled nine when Thor came down from the heavens, shining light and raining thunder. He'd ichor on his armor, ichor on his lips; his face was wet with it. He swung Mjolnir around once, twice, thrice, and the storm began in earnest, dark clouds filling the patched ceiling and breaking open upon them.

"What took you?" Loki asked. He fell in at Thor's right, and Sif fell in at Thor's left.

"I didn't want to take all the fun from you, brother," Thor shouted merrily, then he brought his hammer down.




 

_iv: thor's land._

Who could mourn Loki as Thor mourned Loki? Born together, the one dark and the other bright, they had always been so; and if the one had come to envy and hate the other, before there had been love. Of Thor, ever love. 

"I should have known to look here first," Sif called.

Thor looked to her as she scaled the last few feet to the ledge. Loki had found it when they were children. To three adventurous young æsir long tired of what secrets the palace held, the open alcove tucked high within one of the towers and there forgotten had been a boon, a place to hide and wage their private wars and make treaties when treaties were needed. The alcove looked out upon the north face of the city, and the dying light of day painted the water channels that cut through the city a deep and burnished gold.

Sif sat beside Thor. Her legs hung out over the lip. She touched the side of it and said, "It was so much larger when we were young." She glanced at Thor, who sat with his back bent and his shoulders hunched. "How did you even get up here?"

"Very carefully," he said with a semblance of his usual humor.

She looked over the city. "It won't be easy getting down again."

Thor shrugged. As ever, he would deal with it when he had pressing need to. Ever the same, she thought; but that was unfair. They had all of them changed. She touched the side again. The stone was smooth, polished. It chilled her hand.

"Do you recall," said Thor, then he stopped.

She looked to him. His jaw worked. He stared, unseeing, out at the edge of Asgard, where the water fell and the jagged remains of the Bifröst stood, glittering dully in the sunlight.

"A few things," she said.

He shook his head and began again:

"Do you recall, when we were children, how Loki and I fought over what to name this place?"

She did; she remembered it well. She remembered how Loki had argued it was his right as finder to give the alcove its name, to have it known as such by those who might follow them. His face had paled; his throat had worked. She'd thought it silly. Who else but Sif and Loki and Thor would ever want to come here?

"Yes," she said.

Thor looked down to his knees. Mjolnir lay, waiting, by his thigh. It was strange, then, to see the hammer at his side, when she looked to him and thought him a child again, ruddy and short.

"I won over him eventually," said Thor. He looked around then at the alcove. His eyes passed over Sif, then his gaze returned to her. "We called it Thorheimr."

"I always thought it stupid," she told him.

"I remember," he said, smiling. "You told us so, many times. What was it you wanted to call it?"

"'Your tomb if you don't stop being stupid about it,'" she quoted.

"Now I remember," he said.

They sat together in silence, Sif at the right corner, Thor at the left. The space between them, though little, spread endlessly on.

"I wish I had not fought him over it," said Thor. He fisted his hand about the lip. "I wish I had not fought him over a great many things."

Thor ducked his head. His hair shone, distilled sunlight. She wanted for shadows and black curls, another between them. Sif set her hand upon his wrist.

"It wasn't your fault," she said softly.

"Then whose?" he asked her.

Mad, the people said. Envious, cruel, heartless. She thought of Loki as she had known him those last few days, his face hungry, his eyes wild, how he'd stared down at her from the throne as if the whole of the Bifröst had opened between them. She had known him and not known him.

Sif drew back her hand. She looked as Thor looked out over the city, their city, Loki's city. The last few reds had bled from the sky, and the darker shades of night descended.

"I don't know," she said.




 

_v: sif dreaming._

Night fell. A chill wind rolled through the trees and set them to waving; their laden branches bobbed. A full moon showed in spots between the trees, and it cast a long pale shadow before it. All was silent, and nothing stirred. 

Sif ran. Leaves split beneath her feet. A dried branch cracked like distant thunder. The night engulfed her, swallowed her whole. Only the moonlight, meager though it was here so deep in the forest, offered her guidance. A little trail of beaten brush and matted leaves wound on through the trees, and she followed it more deeply into the forest and the night.

What did she hunt? She could not remember. She bore no arms, no shield, nothing with which to take down a beast. What did she hunt? A thing she could not slay. A thing she could not catch. Her heart drummed. Faster, faster; she knew it slipped from her. However deep she ran into the woods, however close she came to its moonlit heart, whatever she chased ran farther, faster, deeper, closer still. What was it? What beast, what thing?

Things roused. Out the corner of her eye she saw weird silhouettes racing alongside her, in the trees off the path. Eyes glinted, shapeless eyes that caught the moonlight then lost it. Dark eyes. Red eyes. Bloodied eyes which followed her as she ran. They hunted her.

A branch snared her hair. She snapped it off and threw it aside. A great crashing as of a tree falling startled her, and she turned to look over her shoulder. The moon was a waning crescent, and the light it cast showed trees clustered tightly at her back. Thorn bushes spilled out between the trees. The path had gone.

Sif reached for her back where she kept her lance. She did not carry it.

"That won't be necessary."

She turned, her hands empty, her hands bare; but she was not without weapon, not without recourse, if she'd her hands and her feet and her brain besides. Loki stepped out of the shadows off the path. His eyes shone, bloodshot.

"Loki," she said, and yes, yes, it was Loki she had hunted; it was Loki she had sought. "Loki, thank the stars. I've been looking for you everywhere."

"I haven't been hiding everywhere," he said. "It's more 'nowhere,' I would say."

"Well, wherever you've been hiding, I'm glad I've found you."

She reached for him. Loki stepped back. A leaf crackled beneath his heel.

"Loki, please," she said, exasperated, "enough. I've found you. The game's ended."

"This isn't a game," said Loki, "and you haven't found me."

"Don't be daft," she snapped. "You're right here in front of me. I can see you with my own eyes. Do you think me a fool?"

He looked at her. His eyes shone, pale as the thinning sliver of moon above them and veined with red, as if he had not slept.

"No," he said. "I never thought you a fool."

The trees closed about them. The path glimmered faintly at her feet, as if strewn with little stars, and where it led she did not know, but she would take it, and Loki would take it with her. She knew this.

"Then come with me," she said.

She held her hand out to him, to take his elbow in hand and draw him near to her. He stepped back again. His eyes did not leave her face. She could not tell if it was regret which tightened his face or another thing entirely.

He said, "I can't."

The moon had gone. What light shone between them rose from the path, and it was a poor light. She searched his face, but the shadows were too thick and he stood too far from her.

"Why?" she asked. "Why can you not come with me?"

"Why do you want so strongly for me to come with you?" he asked in turn. "Am I so sorely missed? Is my absence so marked?"

"But you are missed," she said.

"And here I thought I was the liar," said Loki.

How could she catch him when she had no net? How could she bear him down when she had no shield?

"Loki, please," she said, "I am your friend—"

"Are you?" He asked this, mocking. "Are you really? My _friend_. You must know me so well. You must know everything there is to know about me."

She came for him again, and like a phantom he glided away from her, ever out of reach.

"And do you know everything about me?" she demanded.

"I know enough," he said. "I know you're dreaming. In a moment you will wake and you will remember only that you were running through the woods."

The trees blurred. The path dimmed. Her heart beat faster, faster. Loki drifted further from her. She had to catch him, she thought. If she did not catch him he would be lost; he would be gone.

"I will find you," she said, "wherever it is you go."

"You never could find me," said Loki, then he was gone and Sif stood alone in a circle of trees with only the wind for company.

The dream faded. Sif woke.





	3. 3.

_i: loki dreaming._

Loki walked the palace. The corridors were empty, and a silence like death swaddled him. Thick roots, wider around than his shoulders, burst through the walls; they arched and twisted, and they knotted together. He stepped over one such root, which rose in a little hump to catch him. Wet soil crumbled underfoot.

He looked for the throne room but could not remember how to find it. He would seek an audience with the Allfather. For what? His breath fogged the air. Winter whitened the way. Lines of ice hung from the roots, and snow crunched where he walked. He cast no shadow, and when he passed a mirror, no reflection paced him. Loki licked his teeth and tasted ice.

Doors rose before him, frost like feathers and flakes spattered in a lacework pattern over the metal. In the darkness, the gold gleamed like brass. He came to them and they opened for him without his touch, without a word, silent on their hinges as the doors to his father's sacred room had never been silent. Loki entered the throne room. A sheet of ice fell from one of the doors at his back.

Odin did not sit on the throne. Who sat there, he could not tell, for a great, shining tree stood before it, and its trunk was vast and its branches twined endlessly about each other as they opened to the ceiling so high above. Silver light fell cold against his face as he ascended the dais. The tree was still, its leaves unchanging, like a thing carved of ice and planted into the earth to grow as frost grew: in unwatched increments.

He knew the tree. He knew, too, the figure who stepped out from behind it. Loki stared up into his own face, terrible and thin and laughing. With deliberate, lazy slowness the other Loki descended first one step then the next. Where he walked the frost receded and pricks of green peeked through, the metal turned to soil.

"Never looked in a mirror before?" the second Loki asked. He smiled. "I'm afraid I'm not blue enough to be your mirror."

In the shimmering surface of the tree, Loki saw a distorted echo of his jaw, his throat: blue skin, dark. The frost giant bared. He turned on the other.

"Who are you?" He held still, assessing, watching as the other passed him. "Where is my father?"

"Laufey lies dead," said the other, "at your hands, I believe. Dead at the hand of Odinson. Was that it?" He laughed.

He remembered then: Odin sleeping dreamless in a cloud of gold, and the monster bent over him.

"Laufey is not my father," said Loki. His breath gusted white, delicate as melting frost. "I am Loki Odinson. Laufey was never my father." The words were vile on his tongue. "I am not Laufey's son."

"Loki Silvertongue," said the other. "Loki Liar's-tongue. Lie, lie, lie to everyone. Lie to yourself. Why should you be exempt from the lashings of your tongue?"

"My father is Odin, king of Asgard!" Loki shouted at him. "My mother is Frigg, queen of Asgard, and I am their son. I am æsir!"

"You were never æsir," said the other quietly. He smiled still. His eyes were pale, green as moss, and in them Loki saw his own eyes red. "You always suspected. How Odin feared you, the monster in his house. How Frigg must have shuddered as you suckled at her breast. You saw it in their eyes."

"Stop it," Loki whispered or shouted; he could not tell. "You have no right to speak of my mother."

The other circled him. Its eyes were sharp, narrow; it did not blink. The tree blinded Loki. He looked away.

"But she isn't your mother. Who was her son? Thor. And she loved him best, as Odin loved him best. Why would she care for the son of Laufey, given to her by Odin as a tool for the future of Asgard?"

"Shut up!" Loki screamed, and he threw his hands out to catch it round its throat.

An awful, consuming light washed over him; it drowned him. The tree shook and in its shaking it rang like a curtain of bells set to chiming again and again. The light bore him into the wall and struck him again as he made to fall to his knees.

"That wasn't very clever," his voice said to him. "I expected better of you."

"I am the son of Odin," he said again, though it hurt him to speak into that endless pealing. "I have proven myself time and again."

"And you have always come up wanting." Scorn, then. "You could not even destroy the birthplace of Laufey."

"I would have," he whispered, "if it had not been for Thor," but his heart ached to say it. He was tired, so very tired. He could find neither hate nor vengeance in his breast. He wanted only to curl into a ball there on that cold floor as the tree sang its alien chorus and sleep and dream of nothing.

"I would have ended them," he said. "I would have killed all of them. For Father. For Odin. That he would know me as his son and—" His throat closed. He forced his mouth open again. "And love me."

The light faded. The other stood above him. He smiled no longer. It wore his face and yet Loki could not read the expression: it was distant, strange, as peculiar a thing as the last delicate chime of the great tree's leaves fading now from the highest arches of Odin's throne room.

"He will never love you," it said, not unkindly. "Not as you wish he would."

"There is always hope," Frigg had said as she gave her hand to Loki.

Loki looked to his hands. His flesh was blue. Deep lines ran along the backs of his hands, his wrists, creases in his skin which he did not know. The inky darkness of his fingernails was strange to him.

"There's always hope," he said.

"Is the hope for Odin's love greater to you than the existence of Frigg's love?" asked the other. "Is it more to you than Thor's love?"

Deep in Loki, the old spite flared, a spark struck off a stone. Through his teeth he said, "Thor—"

"And what of Sif?" asked the other.

Loki looked up. The being's face shone, silver as the tree, and in its eyes he saw the shadow of leaves, eyes green as grass, green as trees, and his own red like blood—red like Sif's formal undercoat.

"Who will come for you?" it asked. "Odin, who knows you as his great failure? Frigg, who knows you as her son? Thor, who knows you as his brother?

"Or Sif," it said last, "who knows you as her friend?"

Frigg's hand, warm beneath his. "There is always hope," she said.

"Who will come?" asked the tree.




 

 _ii: memory: loki._

Loki fled again to the copse of trees at the heart of Frigg's garden. By law the garden in its entirety belonged to the queen and the queen alone, but he thought of that wooded thicket as his. The sunlight, harsh and hot, vanished. The little forest swallowed him.

Cool shadows speckled the one trail Frigg allowed. His heels sounded off the paved path. Bits of jewel winked up at him.

"Loki! Show your face!"

Foolish to stay upon the trail. He shed his shoes and, that they wouldn't betray him, he threw them into the brush and thought: lark, lark, dove, lark. Sif shouted again, nearer. He hadn't time to check if the charm stuck.

Loki darted between the trees. Unswept leaves whispered beneath his toes. The shadows thickened; daylight receded behind him. A tree with particularly high branches caught his eye, and Loki threw his arms about it. Digging his toes into the ridged bark, he shimmied up it; and right on time, for Sif had followed him into the forest.

Breathless, smiling, he crept back upon the thin branch till his shoulders pressed to the trunk. Sif's knife distended his jacket. The blade lay hard against his breast; the tip pushed at his ribs.

"Loki!" she bellowed. "Give me back my knife!"

He thought of shouting, "What's the fun in that?" Her lips would bunch, and Sif would turn sharply to the sound of his voice; her hair would fan through the air. Loki adjusted the knife, then leapt to another tree. A mistake: the branch he pushed off of cracked.

The brush crackled. Sif left the path. She'd taken her shoes off as well—when she moved, she did so softly and high on her toes. She did not speak. A tense sort of quiet filled the spaces between the trees. Sif hunted him, and he'd her hunting knife. The thought amused him.

Loki swung about the trunk till he found a branch which, in its jutting, ran alongside another tree. The branches of this next tree were set lower than he would have liked, but the leaves grew more thickly on them and, perhaps most importantly, Sif neared. Loki slipped from the one tree to the other. There, he stilled and thought himself a shadow, a spot in the foliage where the sun dared not reach.

Sif passed beneath him. She turned her head, and she was near enough he might touch her ear if he wished. Her jaw showed, set. Her lips had pursed, and the crooked humor, the easy confidence, inherent to the shape of her eyebrows was nearly forgotten. She'd tied her hair up with a plain green ribbon. Her hair cascaded dark and gleaming down the back of her long neck, over her strong shoulders. She turned again. A ripple ran through her hair. A strand snagged, wound about the little finger a bush below held out to her.

Loki's hands itched. If she caught him, she would drag her vengeance out of his skin; he would have to fight to run again. The faintest suggestion of sunlight played across her crown, drawing red out of the chestnut brown.

He drew the knife from his pocket. The edge was fine, the blade balanced. Sif tended to her tools as Thor did not his. Loki smoothed his thumb down the center of it. The metal was polished; his thumb glided easily over it. Sif began to move again.

Loki hooked his knees about the branch and dropped silently. He slipped the knife beneath her ribbon and split it in a single, quick motion. The ribbon and a little hank of her hair came away in his other hand. Her dark locks tumbled freely down her back in a glorious, shining tangle.

Sif gasped and rounded on him. Her hair, so thick and wild in its unbinding, flared. Her eyes were huge, a hazel brown in the mingled light and shade of the trees, and she was beautifully, ferociously angry. Too late Loki realized he still hung from the branch, head, shoulders, and weighted hands out of the cover the leaves and his spell offered. The ribbon twisted between his fingers.

"Oh," he said, "hello, Sif. Were you looking for me?"

"Yes," she said, then she grabbed him by his collar and dragged him out of the tree.

Loki tossed the knife aside before he drove it by accident into either Sif or himself. He cracked his head on her shoulder, and Sif tumbled with him to the ground. The jolt jarred him and he curled against the blow. His lips brushed her collar. Sif, unwilling, had caught him—and he was suddenly, hotly aware of: how lean she was beneath him, how her thighs tensed under his hands, how her knee pressed between his legs. His mind emptied. He could not think of what to do.

Then Sif grabbed his tunic and rolled him over. His head struck an exposed root. His vision blacked then cleared again, and Sif filled his sight; she towered above him. Her fingers knotted in his collar. Like the branches of a tree, her hair surrounded her. Light haloed her. Her passion suffused her, and Loki knew it was because of him. He clutched the ribbon tightly in his hand. The strands of her hair drew tight about his fingers, tight so they pinched.

"Caught you," Sif said.

"You would think so, wouldn't you," he said.

Then he brought his legs up and twisted. His elbow planted in her side. Sif gasped and fell, and he flew out from under her. He turned ‘round. Furious, she lifted her head. Her hair, that wondrous dark cloud, spilled across her shoulders, her back, the feral slope of her throat. He smiled.

"You'll have to be cleverer than that to catch me," Loki said.

Rising, she said, "When I'm through with you—"

"You have to start first.” He held his hand high, that she might see the ribbon, how it spun between his fingers. "I think this will make a nice prize."

"It isn't yours," she snapped.

"It is now," Loki said, and he ran.




 _iii: the norns._

In the mountainous shadow of her blessed roots, three sisters worked their cloth. Two of the sisters knew the shadow as a cool thing reminiscent of their youth. The third, if she had not lost her eye, would have known it for what it was.

"Oh, no!" said Skuld, youngest, in dismay. She left off her weaving. "I've lost my eye."

Verðandi, middle eldest, looked up from her spinning. The folds where her eyes had been creased deeply.

"You've lost what?" she asked dangerously. "What is it precisely you've lost?"

"My eye," said Skuld. "I can't find it!" Then her mouth flattened out.

"You mean you've lost _our_ eye," said Verðandi, in a tone of voice which threatened to pick Skuld up and toss her down the well which sat in the juncture of two roots and assured her that once it had done so, Verðandi would happily throw rocks down at her.

Skuld shrank back and tried her best to be silent as she patted at her lap, her blouse, her nose, her unbrushed hair. Of the sisters, Verðandi's ears were best.

Verðandi went on: "How did you lose it? Were you playing ball with it? Were you throwing it in the air? Did you miss?"

"Oh, here it is," Skuld said feebly. "I found it. No need to fuss now."

The middle eldest sister drew herself upright. Verðandi turned her face to Skuld, and her face was terrible as only an elder sister's face could be terrible.

"And where," she enunciated with admirable care, "was it?"

Skuld stuck her fingers in her weaving and pretended she hadn't heard.

Urðr, eldest and wisest and slowest, said, "Tell her where you found it," and Skuld kicked her feet, for she did not want to tell. Urðr picked tufts out of her handful of wool and said, "If you don't, you know she'll kick you."

"Right in your old, wrinkled leg," said Verðandi.

Skuld sighed. Morosely, she picked at her weaving.

"In my hair," she said.

Verðandi threw aside her spinning and shouted, "You found it where? You put our eye, our one eye, in your hair?"

"I didn't know where else to put it," Skuld protested.

"Anywhere else!" said Verðandi. "You could have given it to one of us! We aren't so stupid as you."

"But I need it for my weaving!"

"Obviously you don't," Verðandi said witheringly, "or you wouldn't have put it in your hair!"

They would have gone on like so for years, as they had done so before, had Urðr not pulled a particular burr from the wool and said, "Ah. Loki."

Her two younger sisters raised their heads to her, the one of them sightless, the other bearing their one eye in her right socket. Verðandi leaned forward most eagerly.

"What of Loki? Has he woken?"

Skuld's face ran over with fog. "Too soon," she sighed. "He has many dreams left to him." Then she roused and looked over to Verðandi, who frowned. "And anyway, if he'd woken you would have known of it."

"I only wondered," Verðandi snapped.

But Skuld had lapsed again. She ran her fingers dreamily across her loom and said, "He would have been a great king, Loki Laufeyson. He would have opened Jötunheimr to the stars, and Jötunheimr would have known the peace of Asgard."

"No more," said Urðr. "That is in the past now."

"Odin," said Verðandi, and his name was a curse forced through her teeth.

"Odin," said Skuld. Sadness weighed her. She pulled at the weaving folded by her feet and if she remembered a pattern unwoven and thread lost, her sisters could only imagine it. Her hands slowed and stilled.

Skuld said, "Loki will never be king."

"But will he be happy?" asked Verðandi, urgent.

"I cannot tell," said Skuld. "The pattern is strange to me."

Verðandi sat back and made noise of disgust in her nose. "Then what good are you?"

Urðr turned the burr over and over between her fingers. Her skin, so old, had softened like leather, and the teeth picked at her fingertips.

"Ah," she said again. "A new dream. Is it Sif?"

"Oh, Sif!" said Skuld. "I like her. She will do great things for all the realms in her own name, and—"

"Oh, shut up," said Verðandi. "What is it Loki dreams?"

"Lend us our eye, Skuld," said Urðr, "and we will see."

Skuld clapped a hand over her eye, and Verðandi said, "Oh, for Yggdrasill's undying sake, will you just hand it over? You've had it for three centuries."

"But I need it most," she whined.

"Lend us our eye," said Urðr again.

Skuld sighed again, most aggrieved, but she stuck her finger and her thumb in the socket and pulled the eye out. It popped wetly, then it was in her hand, and she rose to present it to Urðr as Verðandi, too, rose to join them. She unfurled her fingers, and the eye stared unblinking and unthinking up at the sisters with their folded faces and their dried and closed eye sockets. Scars ran out the corners of their eyes, faded but never fading.

Urðr set her fingers to the side of the eye and Verðandi set her fingers to the other side. Skuld held it steady in her palm. As one, the sisters leaned over the little ball and looked down into the shadows, into the place where Yggdrasill's roots met and Loki slept uneasy.

"What is it?" Skuld whispered. "Why does he look so upset?"

"Don't be daft," said Verðandi. "You know full well why."

"Shh," said Urðr, and they were quiet.

Loki dreamed.




 

 _iv: loki dreaming._

Wreathed in silver, Loki ascended to the Allfather's throne. He carried the moon in his hands, and as he climbed the steps its light spilled out from his fingers. The sun set at the back of Odin's throne, its red glare dying. The stink of ash enveloped him. Fire burned in Asgard.

Out of the seat of his father's throne, a sapling sprouted. Its branches opened as a flower blooming. Frost fell from the gaunt fingers. Loki turned the moon over in his pale hands. His flesh showed blue with cold. The crisp metallic tang of a brutal winter drove out the scent of smelting metal and thickening ash. His heart was empty, the edges brittle. If he carried it in his hands he thought it would break. He found he did not care.

The tree grew and grew, a sapling and then a youngling tree. The branches twisted about each other and splintered, again. Again. Leaves rose as pimples then unfurled, and they shone clear as ice. Loki breathed out. In the corners, snow began to fall. The tree pressed into the ceiling, but the ceiling was no longer there. Loki held the moon white in his hands; the moon showed black in the sky.

A dark hollow opened in the trunk before him. Loki set the moon into it.

The doors opened at his back. Loki turned from his father's throne. The moon winked out.

Sif came at him, wreathed in gold. Sunlight glinted oddly in her dark hair, but it was not sunlight. Ash spotted her skin. Blood streaked diagonal across her cheek, a red smear that bisected her lips and curled to die at her throat. Light shone at her back, a fierce, hot light.

"Loki," she said, "what have you done with the king?"

No. He tipped his head. What she said was:

"Loki!"

He turned to Sif as she broke through the doors. Fire poured in around the edges; it limned her skin. She carried with her a blade in her hand and another across her shoulders. His fingers chilled. He bore the box of ice between his palms.

"Everyone is dead," she said. "Asgard is in ruins. The king has fallen. Thor is lost. What have you done?"

No.

The doors opened. Loki lifted his head to the tree. The moon turned in its hollow, and as it turned it passed from full to waning to crescent to new. Behind his throne, the sentinel woke. Fire glimmered in its metal slots.

"Loki," Sif said.

She was at the steps. She was at his shoulder. Her hand closed on his arm then she swore and drew back as if hurt.

He turned to her. His father's crown weighed heavily upon his brow. He looked down into her face. Her eyes were dark and wide, and her mouth was smeared with ash and blood. Her hand had blackened, frostbitten.

"Loki," she said again. "What is this?"

Loki set the scepter that marked his sovereignty hard upon the dais. The sentinel stirred again. Fire rose at his back.

"Loki, please," she said. She reached for him again.

Loki stepped back.

"Loki! You must come with me," she said. "Loki, damn you, will you listen to me?"

The sentinel dwarfed him. He withdrew into its shadow. Sif stared up at him, frustration flickering hotly over her face. Fire twisted at her back. Fire twisted at his. Fire, fire, everywhere. Still his breath froze in the air.

"As I am the king," he said, "I must obey no orders but my own. You forget yourself, Sif. Would you treat your king as you would a second son? Inconsequential? Yours to command?"

"You were never without consequence," she shouted. "Loki, the only one who ever thought you expendable was you. Thor—"

"Thor," he spat. "He was ever your favorite. Ever Asgard's favorite. Well, who is king? Thor or Loki?"

"Is that why you did it?" she asked.

He blinked, and in the sweep of his lashes the world changed. A hot sun bore on his back. Desert sprawled out around him, interrupted only by strange buildings whose purpose he did not know. The sentinel waited.

Sif rose from a crouch. Dirt darkened her shirt. Her leathers had torn across her shoulders.

Again, she asked him, "Is that why you did it?"

The tree bloomed between them. In its shining surface he saw: Sif driving her lance into the sentinel's throat. The sentinel turned, opening to offer her its cleansing fires.

The throne room was cold and still about him. He watched as the sentinel turned and as Sif pulled and pulled and pulled at the lance but could not free it. He watched as fear ran over Sif, fearless. She would not abdicate her lance. She would not admit defeat. He watched.

Sif stepped through the tree. The moon stopped its spinning in the hollow: a waxing crescent. It echoed in her face, half shadow, half light. Loki stood from the throne as she came for him, her hands empty, her mouth set. In her eyes he reflected, pale and dark, draped in silver and green. At his shoulder, a fire burned.

"Tell me why you did it," she pleaded. "You would have killed Thor. You would have killed our friends—Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun. You heard us. You saw us. Why did you do it?"

"They were never my friends," he said. "Who was I to them but Thor's little shadow?"

Sif ascended. The sentinel stood silent and ready at his back. He felt its breath hot on his neck. She spread her hands, the one whole, the other wretched with frost.

"Loki," she said, "you were never his shadow."

His breath came quickly. In a moment she would be upon him. Sif would touch him. Sif would catch him. He would not flee. He was king; it was not his lot to run.

"The moon can only ever reflect the sun's light," he said.

She looked at him as if he were simple.

"You aren't a moon," she said. "You're Loki. You're infuriating and smug and _unbearable_."

The desert sun beat upon him. In Sif's face, the moon shone ever bright.

"I wonder that you should bear me," he said.

"Because you're my friend," said Sif. "You were always my friend. Loki."

She reached for him.

"You were never mine," he said.

The sentinel opened.




 

 _v: memory: loki._

Rain had visited Asgard the night before and though the clouds had long since cleared, the gardens were still wet. A cool sun rose over the horizon. Loki liked the early days of spring nearly as much as he liked the late days of autumn. He curled beneath a tall tree that had only just begun to green.

"Aren't you wet?" Sif called. "You'll have a big spot on your seat."

Thor fell over laughing at the thought. He landed at Sif's feet. She rolled her eyes.

"Not so great a spot as the one Thor will have on his back," Loki shouted.

"Or what Sif will have on her front," Thor said cheerfully before he yanked her legs out from under her.

Of course, Loki had charmed the grass dry before he'd sat upon it; he'd done the same to the tree. It was an easy spell, one of the first he'd learned, easy enough he thought even Thor, who had no head for magics, could learn it. Loki kept it to himself.

His book sat forgotten on his knees. Sif had made a heroic recovery, turning her tumble into a roll which saw Thor flipped once. Thor had thickened some over the winter, though Loki still stood taller than him, but he hadn't yet learned how to use his muscle to his advantage on a smaller opponent; and Sif had ever been quicker.

She'd worn a sleeveless tunic in spite of the chill. Goosepimples stood out on her arms. The lean, strong muscles through her shoulders and upper back tautened. She got her hands under Thor's arms and drove him back. His feet slipped across the wet grass. Stupid, Loki thought. If he'd only brace himself properly she couldn't move him, even with the grass so slick. Thor was already so heavy through the chest.

Sif was laughing as Thor threw his arm around her shoulder and dragged her around. Her teeth flashed. Her hair, loose in its tie, haloed her face. Her chest, soft with the suggestion of breasts, heaved. The sunlight caught on her face; it lit her skin as from within, like a lamp. An uncomfortable tightness settled in Loki's own chest. He did not know why it should. He wished he were fighting Sif.

If he were fighting Sif, he thought. He would not be so stupid or so headstrong as Thor. Sif was quick; she assessed and approached things with a caution others mistook for arrogance. He would need to be quicker. She fought on her toes, weight forward. If he struck for her back instead of attacking her shoulders as Thor did—

He saw it as if it happened then, how Sif would stumble forward, catch herself, and pivot. Hair bright. Lips pulling back in— Not a snarl, but a sneer. Eyes narrow. Her shoulders would straighten and drop. She'd adapt, he thought, putting more weight on her heels. Perhaps she would overcompensate. He would strike low next, for her abdomen or her knees. Would she fall? He thought she wouldn't. She would bend and turn her bending into a blow.

Loki traced it in the way she twisted as she blocked Thor's progress with her arm and wound the other about his neck. His head ached. His stomach pulled. If Thor shone like the sun, Sif shone like a banked fire. His skin crawled as if it were summer, as if he burned. But it was spring, and a chilling breeze rolled through the gardens.

He looked to his book. A History of Asgard's Kings. Out of date by three kings, but— He could not think. Loki sucked on his teeth. He looked up when Sif shouted. Thor threw her to the ground. Her legs bucked. Her arms, bare and reddening with the cool, spread like wings, and her hair pooled.

"Where are you going, brother?" Thor cried as Loki stood. "I would fight you next."

"I'm not beat!"

Sif slammed her fist into the back of Thor's leg. He staggered to one knee, and she fell upon his back.

"If anyone still cares," Loki said when this showed signs of continuing as it had, "I've decided to go some place where I can read without worrying about berserkers tearing me apart."

"Do you mean Sif?" Thor grunted.

"That's half the problem," said Loki.

"He means you're the other half," Sif said to Thor. She kicked at Thor's gut and caught his arm instead.

 

"Thank you, Sif," Loki said.

He had thought perhaps she would look up at this—he thought briefly of her eyes, that hazel which showed green or brown under certain lights, and wondered which it would be—but Sif did not. Thor had taken her attention.

Loki left them to their squabble and found another tree in the gardens, on the other side of the main path. He could hear them still, how they shouted, the occasional bone-jarring thump sounding as one or the other threw the one or the other. He opened his book. The binding creaked at the violence. Loki breathed out through his nose. What did he care? He didn't care, not even a bit. If Sif wanted to beat Thor senseless, then fine; she was as savage as Thor.

He stared at the page. _Tief, second son of Olav, ascended to the throne in—_ The numbers bled together. He stared at the page some more. The numbers split. A dampness bit at his back. The underside of his legs was wet. He'd forgotten to charm either the grass or the tree. Loki closed the book and thought of throwing it so it struck another tree. He came so far as to raise it to his shoulder before he dropped it to his lap.

The force of his feeling upset him most. Loki drew breath and held it. He let it out in small fractions till his heart had slowed and whatever idiotic fog had filled his head cleared. He laid his head back against the trunk. Sif shouted again, then she laughed. Loki couldn't have possibly cared less.

He read alone till his mother's tread sounded on the trail. Her shadow fell over him. Loki marked the page with his thumb. He turned his face up to the queen and smiled. She knelt beside him in the grass. Her gown dipped, billowing like a bell around her feet.

"And why are you here all by yourself?" she asked.

"Sif and Thor are fighting again," he said.

"Are they?" The queen leaned back to look around the tree. "They aren't fighting now."

Loki turned about. He rose to one foot and pressed the fingers of one hand to the ground for balance. In the clearing just beyond Sif and Thor were playing some game of their invention which involved jumping around the path. Sif landed on one foot and, wavering only a moment, she turned and leapt to land on the other foot. Her hair gleamed.

"Sif is a good friend to you, isn't she?" the queen asked lightly.

He looked away from Sif to his mother. Frigg smiled at him as if they shared a secret. Sif laughed. Loki did not turn.

"She's amusing," he said, "and she isn't too thick-headed."

"Oh, high praise," said the queen. She gave her hand to Loki and led him out to meet Thor and Sif.

"There you are!" Thor cried. He left off the game. "I had wondered where you ran off to."

"If you had paid attention," Loki said, long suffering, "you would have known."

Thor persisted, heedless: "Sif wanted to wrestle with you, but you weren't there." He grinned. "So I had to beat her again."

"Oh, shut up with your lies," said Sif, coloring. She turned to Loki. Her shoulders drew back; she pushed her chest forward to boast. "I beat him both times, and the second time he shouted for you to tag in. But you'd gone."

"I did not ask him to tag in!" Thor said. "I said if he wanted to tag in, I would allow him to."

Sif's profile had arrested Loki a moment. Her nose was long and straight, and her mouth curled in a challenge. Loki looked away from her. His mother watched him. Under Frigg's consideration he felt exposed, as if everything twisting inside him were bared before her. He hoped she understood even less than he did and that she would turn her gaze elsewhere.

"Is there a difference?" he asked Thor.

"There is an enormous difference," Thor told him.

Sif sided with Loki. Her shoulder brushed his. She was the taller, still. His brow aligned with her eyes. Her arm was warm against his arm. She smelled faintly of sweat and of wet grass. He had the sudden impression that her tunic had rucked up in the grass and that she'd a stain at the small of her back where she'd slid over it. Loki did not dare look to his mother. He saw her smiling from the corner of his eye. She'd folded her arms in the delicate, dignified way which meant she was greatly enjoying herself.

"There's no difference," Sif said, "and you know it. You're just upset I beat you."

"He hates it when anyone beats him at anything," Loki said to her. "Last week he threw a stone at my head when I bested him at rock skipping."

"Because you cheated!" Thor said, outraged. "I saw you whispering spells!"

Sif and Loki both looked at him as if he'd grown another head. Sif's nose wrinkled.

"Why would Loki cast a spell to beat you at skipping rocks?" she asked.

"Really, Thor," Loki chimed in, "be reasonable. Where would I even find a spell like that? 'How to Charm Rocks So They Skip Over the Water Better Than Thor's Rocks.'"

"I'd like that spell," Sif said.

Thor reddened terrifically. "All right," he said, "so what if you didn't charm the rocks to do what you wanted? You still cheated."

The queen intervened at this. "If Loki says he did not cheat," she said pointedly to Thor, who looked rather like a berry, "then he did not cheat," for Frigg demanded honesty of her sons and had never had reason to think them liars. It was good, then, that Loki had not charmed the rocks. He did not like to disappoint his mother or to deceive her, for his mother believed him.

"I'm afraid both my sons are poor losers," Frigg went on, and she smiled first at Sif then at Loki.

"Thor rages," Sif said thoughtfully, "but Loki sulks."

She made a face at him. Loki made a face back.

"You know them so well," said the queen. Then she gestured to the three of them, urging them ahead of her upon the path. "Now come. It's time for you to eat."

Loki skipped around Thor to take Frigg's arm as he'd seen done in court. Frigg graciously permitted him to help her. She patted his hand and rested her fingers on his wrist. Her sleeves dripped from her arm.

At his back, Sif of no sleeves said, "Now you're sulking."

"I am not," said Thor.

Loki looked over his shoulder at them—at Sif. Her hair was slicked with sweat against her brow, and a bit of dirt speckled her cheek. He smiled obnoxiously at her.

"Now, children," Loki said in his best imitation of Odin, "no fighting."

Sif shook her fist at him. Her mouth screwed up; she stuck her pink tongue out. Smiling still, Loki turned back around.





	4. Interlude.

Veðrfölnir caught a warm wind at the fourth to highest rung and rode that the rest of the way to the top of Yggdrasill. The breeze pulled at her feathers and she turned to adjust for it. Yggdrasill's branches waved; her blessed leaves ruffled on end. More than the winds unique to the great tree worked here, thought Veðrfölnir. The thought worried her, as it had worried her since the hour of the Bifröst’s fall.

She spiraled up the last two rungs. The branches thinned. A spire rose, leaves like fans spread about it. There at the tip, seated in her nest, the eagle turned her head upside down to greet Veðrfölnir.

"Welcome home," said the eagle.

"Lift your head," said Veðrfölnir gruffly, "unless you want me to sit on the inside of your beak."

The eagle turned her head about again. Veðrfölnir circled the nest thrice, then landed neatly upon the eagle's crown. She fluttered her wings out and folded them against her sides.

"Have a nice flight?" asked the eagle.

"How kind of you to ask," said Veðrfölnir dryly, but she was pleased. How many endless eons had she and the eagle known each other? And still the eagle thought of Veðrfölnir. Veðrfölnir preened at her breast, seeking the proper composure there. She couldn't let the eagle get too comfortable, after all.

Before she could think of a suitably clever remark, a little red head peeked out from the eagle's nest and said, "Well, hello to you, Veðrfölnir. We were just talking about you." Ratatoskr smiled ingratiatingly up at her. Veðrfölnir was not ingratiated.

Her ruff flared. "What," she demanded, "are you doing here?"

"Talking with my good friend," said Ratatoskr. "Veðrfölnir, I'm hurt."

Veðrfölnir stepped forward on the eagle's brow and flipped her head around that she might fix the eagle with the grimmest of stares.

"Why is he here?"

"He has news," said the eagle.

"He has gossip," Veðrfölnir corrected. " _I_ have news. Ratatoskr has nothing of interest to say. He'll only upset you."

"I most certainly will not," Ratatoskr protested. "I am a gentleman, and I have only the best interests at heart for your ladyship."

"Thank you," said the eagle gravely. "I will hear Veðrfölnir's news first."

Veðrfölnir straightened. She preened at her breast again and made sure Ratatoskr could see every stroke of her beak through her feathers. Oh, she hoped it stung him to know his gossip came second to Veðrfölnir's news.

"Well?" he asked when Veðrfölnir was not quick enough for him. He pulled at his whiskers. Feigning coolness, she thought smugly. "What is it? Nothing so interesting as what I have to say," he assured the eagle.

"We will see," said the eagle.

" _Thank_ you," said Veðrfölnir. She threw her head back. "There is movement in Múspellsheimr. They build fires and vessels to cross the stars."

"Oh, _vessels_ ," Ratatoskr began cuttingly.

The eagle turned to look at him and he grew small and quiet. Of Veðrfölnir she asked: "What sort?"

"War," said Veðrfölnir. "With the Bifröst broken, Asgard's power is no longer absolute. The other realms are free to move, and Múspellsheimr would move against Asgard."

"Have they ways?" asked the eagle.

"Not now," said Veðrfölnir. "But in time. They will find them, or they will make them. Asgard royally fucked up when they appointed their selves kings of the cosmos."

"So," said the eagle. She was silent a time.

Veðrfölnir had more to say, but she had learned that when the eagle said "so" in that fashion and was subsequently quiet, the eagle thought deeply. Beneath them, Yggdrasill swayed. Her branches cut through the clouds ringed so thickly about her trunk. Scoops of storm fled in the wake of her vast leaves.

"Worrisome," said the eagle at last. She made as if to open her wings then settled again. "The Bifröst breaks. Loki falls. Yggdrasill wakes. Múspellsheimr burns. Some thing is coming."

Ratatoskr peeked out of the nest. His eyes were huge and watchful. His ears were perked. Veðrfölnir would have chased him away, snapping at his head, for Ratatoskr could not grow so large as Veðrfölnir; but a thought struck her.

"You," she said to him. "Gossip-monger."

"I have a name," he said irritably.

"I don't give a shit," said Veðrfölnir. "Have the norns said anything to you of this? The norns would know," she said to the eagle. It was a question.

"The norns would know," the eagle agreed.

But Ratatoskr chittered and pawed at his face and said, sulkily, "That middle one cut off my tail last time I drank from their well. That was three centuries ago. She won't have forgot."

Veðrfölnir looked on him with disgust. She thought the eagle looked on him thusly as well; but, as the eagle was known to like most everyone regardless of how purposefully vexatious and cruel they were, she rather doubted it.

"It's a shame your tail grew back," Veðrfölnir said.

"It's never been the same," Ratatoskr said sadly. He flicked it out for them to consider. Veðrfölnir thought it as bushy and ridiculous as ever.

The eagle stirred again and said, "We will see," then she looked to Ratatoskr and said, "You may speak."

"Finally," he gasped. "Well, I was talking to Níðhöggr just earlier today about your ladyship, and I said to him how very fine a specimen of the flying variety your ladyship is, and do you know what he said to me?"

"No," said the eagle.

Puffy with righteous indignation, Ratatoskr said, "He said to me that your ladyship cannot even fly! That your wings have atrophied, and you might as well be cooked on a fire and eaten."

The eagle began to swell dangerously. She made a noise deep in her throat. Veðrfölnir shouted, "Ratatoskr, you little shit! I'll peck your eyes out! Don't you listen to him, my lady," she said soothingly to the eagle. "He only wants to upset you. You're a fine bird, the finest bird I've known." She preened the eagle's head feathers, smoothing them against her crown again and again.

"You may tell Níðhöggr," said the eagle in a voice which rang like thunder, "that he is a worm, and I will eat him."

"Can't you be a little more inventive?" Ratatoskr wondered.

"I wish the second sister had cut your head off," Veðrfölnir snapped.

So consumed with hatred for Ratatoskr was Veðrfölnir that for a time she forgot Múspellsheimr; but later, as night twined about Yggdrasill and the stars spun out from her branches, Veðrfölnir found she could think of little else but the smoke which had billowed in thick and ashen clouds from the forges, and the fires stoked higher and higher so Múspellsheimr knew not night, and the forests felled to feed the conflagrations.

Yggdrasill shivered. Veðrfölnir tucked her head against her breast and thought of fire and smoke and emptied forests, and the eagle spreading her wings to fly as she had never flown from Yggdrasill the vast, Yggdrasill the unending, Yggdrasill the world tree.





	5. 4.

_i: sif dreaming._

Sif ran. Out the gardens, she ran. Into the palace, she ran. She bore no sword. She bore no lance. She bore no shield. What weapon she carried she carried in her flesh; what shield she carried she carried in her bones.

Time was short. It closed as a trap about her neck. Faster, faster now. The way spilled out before her: endless, endless, endless. Trees, tall and twisting and winter-bare, crowded the corridors. Their roots knotted; they rose in thick tangles to catch her feet. Sif stumbled and caught herself. Bark scraped the skin from her palm. She pressed on.

The trees thickened. Their branches held up the ceiling, then their branches were the ceiling. The walls fell away. Somewhere the moon shone; its light fell silver before her feet. It led her on, a cold, pale beacon that showed whitely in the soil.

The forest twisted about her. Sif threw her hands up and slipped beneath a branch which had loomed out of the dark to catch her in the throat. The wood crumbled sweetly against her fingers. The sickly scent of rot fell upon her. The trees died, their unladen branches skeletal and brittle and smooth as bone. Beneath the stench of rot and death, she caught a distant, choking smell, like smoke from a fire.

What burned? What smoked? The trees shuddered around her. Dying, they feared death. The air was cold and it bit at her nose; it made the smell of nearing smoke a dry, sharp thing.

Loki, she thought. Loki.

He was here. She knew he was here. Loki ran on before her. She saw his coat flickering at the corner of her eye. She heard a soft echo of his heel as it broke through the soil. Loki was quiet and Loki was quick, and Loki was ever crafty, but Sif was the hunter.

Strange beasts looked out at her from hollows, from branches, from the roots of the trees. Their eyes shone. A great bird passed beneath the moon, and its wings blocked the stars. A shadow washed over Sif. The way darkened. The moon had gone. She stumbled again and set her hand out. She could not slow. She felt time slipping away from her. She felt Loki slipping away.

Sif ran blindly.

Out of the branches a beast with a soft mouth spoke: "Why do you chase him?"

"I have to know why," she said.

Out of the roots a beast with a slithering tongue spoke: "So what if he tells you?"

"Then I will know why he did it," she said. Her breath came shortly.

Out of the hollows a beast with a chattering tooth spoke: "When you know, what will you do?"

"I will take him to Asgard," she said. "I will take him home, that he may answer to everyone he betrayed."

Out of the moon's shadow a beast with a hard jaw spoke: "Who did he betray?"

Her heart stormed. Her ribs pinched. She could not slow. She could not slow. Her breath burned in her mouth.

"All of us," she said. "All of us who loved him."

The bird wheeled away. The moon fell brighter still upon her, and Sif turned her eyes from the sudden light. Her eyes closed. Out of that private darkness Loki spoke:

"And who was it who loved Loki?"

Sif turned sharply. Spots like burn marks on paper filled her vision. She could not see for the light. The trees rose, silver as the moon. In their shadows, did he watch her? Did he hide?

"I did," she said. "I loved him. He was my friend, and I loved him."

"Why?" he asked. "Why did you love him? How did you love him?"

"He was my friend," she said again. The words were sour in her mouth. She turned on her heel and looked to the sky, to the branches woven over her head.

"You knew nothing of him," said Loki, "but you call him friend."

His breath was cold at her shoulder. Sif rounded on him. He was not there. Her chest hurt for the turning. She balled her hands in fists then smoothed her fingers out. She cast her arms wide and shouted,

"I knew that he was cleverer than anyone else I had ever known. I knew that he was a fool, too. I knew that he was as brave as Thor even if no one else saw it. I knew that I wanted to wring his neck more often than not."

His voice was ugly, honed to cut; he wielded it as a blade.

"You knew _nothing_."

The moon darkened. The smoke neared. It stung her eyes, her nose, her throat. She could not think but for how she wanted to grab him by his shoulders and throw him against the ground and hold him there, that he would not wriggle out of her hands, that he would not slip from her again as he always slipped from her.

"Why do you hide?" she asked of him. "You were always a trickster and a liar and a thief, but you were never a coward."

"And why should I show myself?" he countered. "Why should I return with you to Asgard? O, mighty Asgard. O, holy Asgard."

She shook her head slowly at first then quicker. Such hate filled his throat, such cruel loathing. She could not understand it.

"Asgard is your home," she said.

"Asgard is not my home," Loki said sharply. "I have no home. I want no home. My father saw to that."

"Your father loves you!"

Loki laughed. "Does he now? And which father would that be?"

The smoke drew nearer still. Fire crackled, a low murmur. The trees shivered. Their branches quivered, passing back and forth like hands stretched out for aid. Rot and burning wood weighted the air.

"There isn't any time for your riddles," she said. She held her hand out to the shadows. "Loki. We must go now. Give me your hand, and we will go together. You and I. As we did once."

"We were children once," he said, "but that was long ago. If we were friends then, then we are no longer."

"Fine!" she snapped. Anger made her short. "Then we aren't friends. Who would want you for a friend? But you must give your hand to me!"

"I would so hate to burn that lovely hand," he said. His voice faded. He withdrew. "I'm afraid you're out of time."

She darted for the shadows, but the shadows were gone, the darkness burnt from the trees by the encroaching flames. Sif turned to them, and the fire, towering to consume the world, was hot upon her face. Metal stirred in the deeps. Out of the flames, the sentinel stepped, and it shone silver like the moon and red like the sun.

Sif bore no sword; she bore no lance; she bore no shield. She set her feet, one behind the other, and raised her hands against the sentinel. Its face parted. Fire guttered deep in its throat. Sif did not run.




 

 _ii: shadows, mirrors._

Cut off from the rest of the universe, nevertheless Asgard carried on. Her mountains were great, and her belly was greater; the tunnels and catacombs held monsters still. A nest of wyrms, undiscovered, hatched below the fourth aqueduct.

Out from the darkness, a fourth wyrm came slithering on the ceiling for Sif. The tunnels were small and cramped, and she'd barely room enough to throw herself to the side and bring her lance up. The tip stabbed into the rock; the blow ran down her arms. Sif tightened her hands about the hilt and dragged it free again. Rock showered upon her.

The wyrm dropped beside her. It was small, still just a hatchling, and its eyes rolled sightlessly behind the white film that covered them and would cover them till it had matured enough to leave the area directly attached to the nest. The tip of its tongue flashed. Its jaw opened, distending. Perhaps it could not see, but it had teeth enough to shear her arm at the elbow.

Sif skipped back. She'd dropped her torch, a light enchanted to fill a glass ball. Now she flipped it up on her foot and kicked it into the wyrm's mouth. The beast snapped its teeth into it. Light exploded like a sun bursting; in the moment before it winked out she saw blood spurt in dark violet waves from the wyrm's mouth. The glass had cut deep. The creature began to scream. Sif turned her lance about and drove it deep into its throat.

The scream turned wet; the wyrm gurgled. Blood sprayed against her hands, her wrists, her arms bare above her bracers. Where it landed, her skin itched and began to boil. Sif twisted the lance and drove it deeper still. Claws scrabbled over stone. The creature bucked, forcing itself onto the lance as it struggled. Her arms burned; her hands as well. The skin on her knuckles and the backs of her fingers flaked.

A claw hooked in her boot and Sif leaned back to kick the wyrm's chest. So young, its scales were pliable, its bones soft. Ribs snapped beneath her foot. She pushed her lance in again and the wyrm spasmed once, twice, and was still. Sif counted out ten seconds. Each second she ground the lance another inch into the creature's gullet. Wyrms were tricksome and tough. The last she'd forgotten to ensure one such beast was dead, it had clawed a chunk out of her back before she'd cut its head from its neck.

It kicked again at the third thrust, then no more. Sif leaned against her lance. Sweat beaded her throat, her brow, the small of her back. The burning on her arms persisted. Setting her foot on the corpse's head, she jerked her lance free. Blood spattered her boots. The stink of burned leather greeted her. Sif stepped from the wyrm and crouched with her back to the wall. Glass crunched underfoot. She shouldn't have kicked the light into its mouth.

If Loki were here, she thought.

Sif covered her face.

"Shit," she said. Her hands stank of wyrm blood and burned flesh. She listened for the signs of another wyrm. Green lights turned behind her eyes. A spot on her cheek itched where her thumb touched it. She dropped her hands. Her eyes ached, too dry.

A light showed behind a bend in the tunnel, beyond the wyrm. Sif felt for her lance. Her hand brushed over the rounded blade; the blood, still hot, ever hot, snapped at her fingertips. She grabbed the hilt.

Hogun emerged. He held his torch high. A burn showed along his jaw. His hair, usually worn so tight against his scalp, had come loose against his brow. He slung his mace to his shoulder, and circling the dead wyrm, he joined her.

"Where is your light?"

She shrugged. "I had to give the wyrm something to eat, the way it was carrying on."

Hogun frowned. His brow pinched. As she stood, he tipped his head to the other end of the tunnel.

"And if another had come?"

"Is there another?"

"I counted nine shells and," he said, glancing to her kill, "nine dead."

"Then why the concern?" she teased. It came out as flatly as it had sounded in her head. She turned and scraped her blade clean on her heel.

Hogun was quiet for a time. Then he made a little noise in his throat, not clearing, but calling. She looked to him, for he was her friend and she owed him that much, though she did not particularly want to do so. He held the light evenly between them; it did not waver. Hogun did not waver.

"It is unlike you to be so careless," he said to her there beneath Asgard, the wyrm, dead, cooling at their feet and the lamp in his palm shining yellow. His eyes flickered: he looked to the wyrm, the glass, the burns on her arms. "This is not the first."

She touched her right eye, first finger to one corner, middle finger to the other. Hogun waited.

"I haven't been sleeping well," she said at last. She lowered her hand. "Bad dreams." She thought to add—but no. She would not bare herself thusly, even to Hogun.

"Do you need speak with the healers?" he asked. "For a sleeping draught?"

She shook her head so her hair shook with her. "No. I will be fine." She winched her mouth to one side. "I'm sorry if I've proved unreliable of late."

"You need not apologize," said Hogun. "You have not been so." He turned from her. "We must gather the heads to show Odin."

Sif ran her thumb across her brow. She twisted her lance about in her hands so the rounded side retracted and an edge jutted. She stepped around Hogun and said, "Please. Allow me."

He turned to permit her passage. Collecting the heads was a gruesome task which necessitated care, but as the wyrms were dead, it was not such a challenge. They came out from the catacombs into late afternoon, the sky edging from red to purple; blue would follow in a few hours. The first faint stars glimmered above the palace.

She went to her mother's house that evening. Her father's house, too; but Sif and her father did not speak to each other, and she did not think of it as his house. She knocked once at the door, then she pushed it open.

Her mother looked up from her embroidery. Her face lit and she said, "Sif," as if they had not seen one another in ages; and they had not. She drew the thread taut then tucked the needle behind the cloth and rose to embrace her.

Sif hid her face in her mother's hair. Her mother's brow drew even with Sif's jaw, her nose with Sif's throat. When she laughed, bemused, it rushed hotly over Sif's collar.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," said Sif. She released her mother. "I missed you. That's all."

"I've missed you as well," said Astra kindly. "Perhaps if you called on us more often we would not miss each other so."

"Perhaps," said Sif. She smiled.

Her mother squeezed Sif's arms. Then her mouth pursed and she drew back to look Sif over, to take in the bandages wrapped about her hands, her wrists, her elbows. The scent of mint drifted between them, loosed from the poultices. Sif looked away from her mother's eyes; she could not bear the sorrow. Her father stood in the door to the next room, a shadow against the light at his back. He paused there. She could not tell if he looked to her or to his wife.

"Oh, Sif," said her mother. "What have you done?"

"I've killed a nest of wyrms." Sif looked at her father. He turned away. Lieff had never wanted for a warrior for a daughter. "His majesty the king was very pleased," she said angrily at his back. "Wyrms are dangerous game. Not many warriors can slay so many."

Her father passed out of the door. The light hurt her eyes.

Astra smoothed her hands down Sif's arms, mindful of the bandages.

"I am proud of you," she said softly. She looked up to Sif, and her dark eyes were soft, always soft. "Ever I am proud of you. It's only, to see you again after so long, like this—" She cut off.

Sif took her mother's hands in her own and clasped them tightly. "Believe me when I tell you I'm fine. They're only little burns. They won't even scar."

"Still," said Astra. She looked searchingly at Sif. "I worry about you."

"You don't need to," Sif said, smiling.

"But I do," said Astra. Then she bit her lip and turned. She dabbed at her eyes with her fingers, and Sif felt wretched, clumsy, cruel. She did not know what to say. Her mother's shoulders bowed. Astra had been the one to support Sif when she began formal training, but there were times when Sif thought perhaps her mother regretted it.

Astra shook her hair back. Smiling brightly, she looked over her shoulder.

"Will you be staying the night?"

Sif wanted for something to pull apart in her hands. She touched her elbow instead, where the edge of the bandage turned out.

"Yes," she said, "if that's all right with you."

"Of course it is," said Astra, and she smiled truthfully at Sif.

Sif picked at her bandage and asked, "Do you need help with the meal?" and when all else was done, she walked the stairs to her old room.

The notch in the second stair to the top meant to trip her, but she hadn't forgotten it. Her feet knew the way. A certain board creaked underfoot. A decorative dresser loomed out of the shadows, and she walked around it; it was where it had always been, there in the hallway with a metal bowl on top and nothing in the bowl but dust. Like looking through a dirtied glass; that was how she felt. It was as if she were a child again. Her father had sat across from her at the table and neither looked at nor spoken to her, and when Sif stood to wash he looked to Astra and asked her why she fixed salmon.

"Sif likes it best," said Astra.

Father said no more.

Now Sif sat upon the edge of her childhood bed and looked around the room. It was empty; it was bare. She had cleaned everything of meaning from it when she left her mother's house for the palace. Now it held nothing for her.

A flicker caught her eye. She turned too quickly; her neck pinched. But it was only her hair in the little mirror set by the bed. Sif stared out at her from the glass.

"Why did you come here?" Sif asked of her.

For her mother, whom she had left alone in this house with her father. Sif heard his tread in the hall and looked to her door, but she had closed it and when he passed she did not see him. The room was so very small. Her chest stuck; her nose hurt for the force of her breath. She had forgotten how she hated this room. Between one visit and the next, she always seemed to forget how it closed about her, how in its smallness it made her small.

Her reflection watched her, and so Sif watched it, too. Why had she come here? What did she look for now in the mirror? Only Sif looked at her, no one else. She was alone, as her mother was alone, as, she supposed, her father was alone. All families break, she thought; but that wasn't true. The thought snuck in: if Loki had lived—

But he hadn't lived. He had died. He was gone. Her reflection looked as if she did not believe it. Her reflection looked as if she had dreamt of him nightly for days now, for weeks, till she saw his shadow in her own and heard his voice in her ear when another spoke.

"He is dead," she hissed at the mirror. "Loki is dead. He fell. Thor saw it. You must stop this. You will stop. Now."

The dead were dead, lost forever. Hel would not give up her prizes. She did not know why it should hurt her so. He had been her friend before he had been her king. Yet Thor was her friend, too, and when he had been banished she had not ached so, as if her insides were sharp and rubbed together ceaselessly. But Thor had not been dead.

Sif turned from the mirror. Tearing her tunic off, she threw it over the glass. The cloth fell in folds; her reflection vanished. A little sliver of glass showed between an arm and the body of her shirt. She was done. No more. She would not dream of Loki. She would not think of him. The dead were dead.

She dropped onto her bed. Her arms, her hands, her fingers itched. She scratched at her bandages then forced her hands still. A small light looked through the window—the lamp that swung outside the front door. Shadows ran across the ceiling. Sif followed them in their courses, round in circles, till they bled together.

After a time she dreamed:

Fingers at the back of her neck, cold fingers, so cold her skin ran hot with it. She turned. Loki stood there beneath a great ash tree. The moon hung in its branches. She could not see his face for the brightness.

"Sif," he said. "Does your mother know you're here?"

The world was concave about them. Sif and Loki, the tree and the moon, hidden in a glass bowl. Her neck burned.

"This is a dream," she said. "You aren't here."

"Neither are you," said Loki. He turned his head. His brow, his sharp chin, the long line of his nose: all of it showed as a shadow to her, blurred at the edges with light. "But is it your dream or mine?"

Her chest hurt. She had chased him, she thought. If she reached her hand out to him, would he run again? Did he wait for her to touch her fingers to his sleeve? Like a ghost, would he shiver out of her hands?

Like a ghost.

"The dead don't dream," she said.

He looked to her again. "As a general rule, no, I would think not. But as I've never been dead, I wouldn't know."

"Stop," she said. Her breath caught in her teeth. She tightened her mouth. "Stop it. You're dead. Thor saw it; he saw you fall. Not even you could survive that."

His shoulders shifted. She thought perhaps he would step forward. She did not know if she wanted him to. The glass pressed to her back.

"Did I?" he asked. "Are you dreaming or am I? Am I dead, or are you dead?"

"Don't joke," she said. The moon shone full on her face, and in its light she saw the Destroyer's jaw opening.

"I never joke," said Loki. "How would you know if you were dead? Have you talked with anyone who's died recently? After death."

"I live," she said harshly, "with no thanks to you."

He did not speak. The branches shivered. The moon turned. A redness grew out of its belly to swallow it.

"Why did you send the Destroyer?"

"To kill Thor," he said, flat. "I had no choice. If you had only listened to me, I would never have had to send it. He would have lived his life on Midgard with his lady Jane, and we could have avoided this whole, stupid mess."

"No," Sif said. "It doesn't work like that. You sent the Destroyer. You did that. No one made you do it."

"Fine," he said, as if it were an indulgence. "I sent it. I told it to kill him."

The moon shone red as fire.

"You told it more than that. What did you tell it?" she asked him.

"I told it to kill whatever got in its way," he said.

She came forward then. His coat was sleek on her fingers. He did not vanish; he did not run. Sif wound her hands in his collar.

"You saw everything," she shouted. "You heard it. I know you did. You heard Thor when he spoke to you, when he reasoned with you. You must have seen me when the Destroyer tried to kill me."

"I saw." The moon hid him, still. "But you didn't die. Did you?"

"That isn't how it works, Loki," she said tightly. "Why did you do it? Why?"

"I've tired of this dream," he said.

"This isn't your dream to tire of," she said. "This is my dream, and you are going to tell me why you tried to kill me."

"I wasn't trying to kill you," he shouted back.

She shook him. His coat pulled tight over his shoulders. He did not fight her—Loki, who always fought.

"You could have stopped it! You saw it, and you did nothing."

"Did you want an apology?" He spoke quickly, lowly, his tongue twisting. "Did you want me to get on my knees and tell you how sorry I am? How I never wanted to hurt you? Do you want me to swear it was a mistake and to vow never to so much as pull a hair from your head?"

Sif said: "Would you mean it?"

Loki said: "Would you believe it?"

They had been children once. They had been friends. It hurt her to think of it.

"Why do you hide your face in my dreams?" she whispered. "Why can I never see you?"

"It's a cliche, isn't it," he said, "the monster revealing itself to the maiden beneath the full moon."

"I am no maiden," she said, "and you are no monster."

"No," he said, "you are no maiden."

He set his hands on her wrists. Her skin hurt; it tightened. She remembered suddenly a dream from the week before, how she'd woken curled about her hand, which ached as if she'd struck it in her sleep. Now her wrists burned beneath his fingers, his long, elegant fingers. He'd always had beautiful hands. They were beautiful now, too, and blue.

"In the stories," he said, "some brave warrior always slays the jötunn. Will you do it?"

The moon had turned to ice. His eyes were red and his skin was blue. His hair, slicked, curled black at his throat.

"Loki?" she said.

Then the glass broke beneath her feet, and Sif woke alone in the dark. Light shone in the window; the lamp still swung. She felt for her wrists, bandaged. This was her room, but it could not be her room. For a moment Sif could not remember how old she was, then a stair creaked and she knew that this was her mother's house, that she had stayed the night, that she lived here no more.

The back of her neck was cold. She touched it and turned, searching. What did she search for? A flash of red. An eye on her. The mirror, covered. A bit of glass winked at her. Sif lunged for it. She tore the cloth away, and in the mirror she saw: Sif. The bed, the quilt wrinkled where she'd slept on it. The window where the light gleamed.

Her heart beat and beat. The room was empty. The room was silent. His hands cold upon her, his eyes gleaming red: what had she dreamt? What had she made of Loki in her dream? Jötunn. The son of Odin.

"Are you dreaming or am I?" he'd asked her beneath the tree, beneath the moon, within that shining bubble that made the world.

"He is dead," she said to the mirror.




 

 _iii: memory: sif._

Far over the mountains, a storm gathered. The air thickened with the rising moisture. As the day was already over-warm, Sif wished she had thought to wear a sleeveless tunic. In running from the house, she hadn't taken the time. Summer pressed on her. Sif turned the stick in her hands and lashed out at a near branch. A crack sounded, and beneath it: a snapping twig.

She rounded. The tip of the stick drew even with Loki's throat. He lifted his empty hands to show them to her. His hair was dark, his eyes pale, the shadows thrown by the trees shivering across his face.

"Peace," he said. "I only wondered who made such a violent racket by the pond."

Sif scowled and withdrew. She spun the stick, dropping it to her foot and kicking it up again. The pond, alone in this small clearing, was clear and calm but for the wind stirring its edges. If only she'd that sort of control, but that made her think again of her father. She turned from Loki. The stick was rough in her hand. She tightened her fingers around it, so the bark bit into her palm.

"Were you expecting someone?" Loki, still. "Thor's busy. He did poorly on a test."

"I'm not expecting anyone," she said. She brought the stick down hard on a branch that jutted at her. The leaves rattled. Two fell, stems broken.

"Ah," said Loki.

He was quiet then. Sif followed the first two forms, bending, rising, striking, guarding, advancing and retreating. Loki watched. He'd a way of making himself known when he wished to be known, even in his silences. Like a shade in a mirror, seen from the corner of her eye. Sweat slicked her throat, her brow, her nape. Her hair fell heavily against her neck and back. She brought the stick down in the last step, then she turned on him and snapped,

"What? What is it? Either speak or leave."

He'd taken a seat on a fallen limb. Now Loki blinked up at her. His eyes were wide and nearly dark in the knitting shadows of the trees. His white shirt opened at his throat. The little crook in his clavicle showed.

"I was admiring your form," he said. "You don't have much formal training. But you've learned a lot from watching Thor. You're quicker than he is."

Her ears burned. She _had_ watched Thor at practice. Once or twice, she'd joined him in the yard. Had Loki watched her at practice? Cool eyes in the shadows, stopping to see what the little girl would do with a wooden sword.

"What business is it of yours?" she demanded. "Why should you care if I play at swords?" She curled her lips in. The words were bitter on her tongue. Her throat hurt.

Loki's eyes lidded. His lips pursed.

"Oh, save it," he said. "It isn't me you're mad at."

Sif went hot all over, hotter still than before. She would have shouted at him—the words were hard in her mouth, _What do you know?_ —but she saw her father in Loki's shadow. She heard an echo of his voice in the shape of Loki's mouth.

"And besides," Loki went on, "even you aren't quick enough to cut me." His smile turned like the edge of a knife, secretive and silver.

She weighed the stick in her hand, measured the distance between them, counted: four steps to stand before him, a second to cross them, another half to take his collar in her hands, another to draw him to his feet. She took one step. He was smiling at her still when someone at her back pulled lightly on her plait.

Sif turned, and her stick passed through a phantom, one which smiled at her as Loki smiled at her. Then another caught her stick and yanked it from her hands. She threw her elbow back and caught: air. Nothing.

Two Lokis smiled at her, the one seated, the other standing. The third stepped out from behind the second. He held her stick out to her, the knobbed end she'd used as a grip first. She took it; she could not think of what else to do.

"What is all this?" she asked, looking over her shoulder.

The first Loki blinked out. When she turned, the second had gone, too. Loki, just the one, stood before her. He smiled again, so very pleased with himself. Sif kicked him in the shin.

"Got you," she said with satisfaction as he stumbled against her. "You're not so quick now."

He'd arrested his fall by grabbing onto her arms. She felt the pressure of his fingers on her arms, the line of his jaw where it grazed her breast. He pushed off, away. His lips were white, pressed thin. He brushed at his sleeves, the front of his shirt.

"I should've known you were too brutish to appreciate a trick like that," he said.

"You've scared all the dirt off," she said when he moved on to his hips. His hair fell black against his brow. Then she looked at him again. "Oh, no. Did I hurt your feelings?"

His mouth curled. Loki looked up to her. A line creased his brow, then it smoothed. A purposeful blankness fell upon him.

"Hardly," he drawled, but she'd caught him; she had.

"I did!" she said with delight. "I hurt your feelings. You were showing off!"

His lashes flickered. The corner of his mouth tightened then eased. He flicked a languid look over her, from her brow to her toes, and sneering, said, "I'm surprised you've confused me with my brother."

"Oh, shut up," she said. "You're as bad as he is."

He said, "I'm sure Thor will be thrilled to hear of it." Pissily, she thought, and she laughed. He'd been _bragging_ , like Thor puffing his chest up when he'd swept her feet out.

Loki said, "Well, you're in a better mood. I'm so glad I could help."

"Lay it on thicker," she said, but her laugh faded, then her smile too.

"I will not see my daughter prancing around playing soldier," her father had shouted at Mother. "I will not have her disgracing herself. She is a girl, and that is all she is."

Loki looked to her. The wind had strengthened, and as it slithered through the trees it set the leaves to turning. Speckled shadows danced across his face, in his hair. Waves rolled across the pond. Thunder sounded, distant.

"Thor wondered if you would join him at practice," Loki said suddenly.

"What, now?"

"Yes, now," he said as if it were obvious and Sif unspeakably dull, "and tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and so on, ad infinitum, et cetera."

She stared at him. Loki stared back. His mouth pulled down. He rolled his eyes and sighed noisily.

"It's a formal invitation," he said slowly and clearly, "to formal training with the formal prince, formally. If you want to accept," he added, "you should go now."

Sif could not breathe a moment, then the world snapped into focus again and Loki, insufferable Loki, stood at the center of it.

"Why didn't you tell me first thing?" she shouted.

"In the mood you were in?" He clicked his tongue. "No, thank you. Not with you carrying that big stick around and looking for something to hit."

"I wouldn't hit you for this!"

She shook the stick furiously at him. Loki leaned out of reach and eyed her.

"You're a barbarian," he said. "You're unpredictable. I don't know what you'll do."

"I'll kick your knees in for starters," she shot back.

"That's why I didn't want to tell you," he said.

She slung the stick at his legs and Loki danced away, spinning on his heel. She could have chased him, would have chased him—wanted to chase him, catch him, pin him on the ground and make him swallow all his smiles and teasing laughs—but to train, to _train_.

"I'll get you later," she promised.

"Is this the thanks I get?" he shouted after her. "I didn't have to tell you today!"

"Go stuff yourself!" Then she turned on her heel and shouted: "Thank you!"

She didn't know if he heard. Thunder cracked nearer now. She'd a ways to go before the storm broke over the mountains and slid down to catch them, and Thor would begin his training soon, sooner if she did not run. She wouldn't wait to find out whether or not Loki had cared to stay or to follow.

Sif slipped through the trees and ran fleet-footed out from the woods and up to the palace, which shone like the sun even as the storm swarmed darkly about it.




 

 _iv: hearts, dreams._

Thor walked with the queen through the winding corridors of the innermost complex of the palace, reserved for the king and the queen and their sons, now one, and those whom they deemed worthy of welcome. Windows gave them light, windows which ran all along the walls and looked out across their city, Asgard. Sif knew on the other side, outside, the windows showed as thick metal, impenetrable and opaque. Loki had explained how it worked once. Sif hadn't listened.

She called out to the queen and to Thor: "May I join you?"

They turned to her, Frigg and her son, and smiled, but it was Frigg who took her hand from Thor's arm and held it out to Sif.

She said, "Please, walk with us." From Frigg, it was as it was: an invitation to be taken or discarded, and though she would be saddened by the latter, she would accept it. From the queen, it was more than that. The queen's please was demand, command; to be taken and not discarded, for it could not be discarded. Sif had known the princes years of their youth when she at last realized here, in the most private palace, it was not the queen who spoke to her but Frigg, just as it was not the first prince who told her to stop bowing, but Thor who thought she looked a chicken.

Sif took Frigg's hand. Frigg tucked her hand in Sif's elbow and held her arm tight to her side, as she held Thor's arm tight to her other side, and together the three of them proceeded. Frigg's fingers were light in the folds of Sif's arm, and they were steady, too.

"Thor," said Frigg, "was just telling me of his lady Jane of Midgard."

Over Frigg's head, Sif saw Thor smile. He had smiled in the days since—since the breaking of the Bifröst, but not like so, as if the light on his face came not from the sun without the windows but from within. It was a quiet smile, a happy smile. Sif was glad to see it, so very glad.

"Jane Foster," he said, as if her name were something to be taken on the tongue and held there till it melted away. "But she is no lady, though," he hastened to add, "she is a lady. She is a professor, a teacher of the sciences. She studies the stars, how they move, where they go, what lies between them. She is more clever than anyone else I have ever known."

"To hear Thor speak of her," said Frigg to Sif, "you would think her as wise as Odin, as good as Idunn, and as beautiful as Freyr and Freyja together."

"She is all that and more," said Thor, laughing.

Frigg and Sif shared a look, for it was so, that when Thor loved he would love deeply, blindly, truly, and never mind if he had only known her three days.

Frigg tapped her fingertips at Sif's elbow. An old, familiar sign. Sif turned to her.

"You saw her," said Frigg. "You spoke with her. What is she like, Thor's lady, Jane?"

Sif weighed her words. Frigg looked at her, the mother worrying, the mother hoping, but Thor looked at her, too. She knew he worried and hoped as well. Love made her weigh her words. She thought of how Jane had looked to Thor when he spoke of his father dying (and she thought, too, of how her own heart had splintered to hear him say it; she had thought: Loki, and her splintering heart had hardened). How Jane had stayed as the Destroyer neared; she would not leave her people to die, or allow for Thor, without his power, to face it alone. How she had run heedless into the fray to stand over Thor, to touch his face and tell him to live. How she had fought to remain even as Mjolnirr cut through the heavens like a falling star.

"She is brave," said Sif slowly. "Recklessly so. She was not made to fight, but she would have fought."

Sif remembered the sun hot on the back of her neck and the Destroyer's blooming fires hot on her face. The palace was cool. She blinked the memory of fire away.

"When the Destroyer came," Sif said to Frigg, "she could have run. She should have run. But she chose to stay."

Frigg smiled then, soft so the little folds at her eyes deepened. Thor looked to his mother.

Another memory, fleeting: of the queen touching the back of Sif's shoulder and saying, "You are a good friend to Loki." Sif was a child then and she had looked up to the queen, and she had found the queen smiling. They were in the garden, and the sun peeked over Frigg's shoulder. Then Frigg had turned from her and called to her sons. Thor came first, but it was Loki Sif saw first; Loki, who dropped from a tree like a leaf, like a shadow, his face turned to Frigg but to Sif as well.

As she had felt then, now Sif felt a strange prickling at her nape, as if a cold wind ran over her. As a child she had slapped at her neck and wondered at it. Now she thought she knew why, why the itch in her skin, why the burden in Frigg's delicate touch, why Loki had looked to her standing at Frigg's side and let Thor pass him.

"I see why Thor should love her," said Frigg dryly. She smiled, though, as she had smiled at Sif when Sif was just a girl who played at swords and Loki, to everyone but that girl who played at swords and Frigg, Thor's little brother, only a shadow, not Loki at all but a second thought.

"If she's so brave as to care so little for herself," said Frigg, "then it's no wonder."

She turned to Thor. Her curls shone, gold. Thor bowed his head to his mother, and he shone, too, like honey and sunlight.

"I'm glad," said Frigg softly to Thor. "I'm glad that you should love her. I only wish I could meet her. This brave woman from Midgard."

Thor smiled, a small smile. His eyes pinched. Frigg lowered her head. The silence unspooled. Sif turned from them and looked instead to the windows which rounded the far corner. Asgard gleamed, brass lined with dark shadows, gold laced with silver and onyx. Green showed where the forest grew to fill Asgard's spaces.

"But you _will_ meet her," Thor said to Frigg. He believed it, Sif knew, deeply, blindly. Truly. "I have told you how she is more clever than any other. If anyone is to open the way again, it will be Jane Foster."

Frigg took her hand from Sif's arm. She set it on Thor's cheek, her long fingers so still on his beard, his skin.

"If you believe," said Frigg, "then I believe."

 

Thor smiled and covered his mother's hand with his own.

"You will like her."

"I believe I will love her," Frigg told him.

Then she rose on her toes and kissed him gently on the side of his nose. Sif ached for her mother. She looked away.

Frigg settled. "I'm afraid I've put off my work as long as I can. Will you two promise to behave and not to fight?" She touched Sif's shoulder.

Sif mustered a smile. She meant it. It was difficult not to mean a smile when Frigg asked it of you.

"I can make no promises," she said.

"Well, I can," said Thor, ever the poor sport. He took his mother's hands in his own and said, quite earnestly, "I vow not to wage battle with Sif on this day."

"That's all I ask," Frigg told him, amused.

Turning, she smiled at Sif and touched her cheek as well, in parting. There was a moment in there, a little half a moment which flitted from Sif as a bird from a tree, in which Sif wanted to tell Frigg, _I dream of your son at night. I see him in my mirror when I turn away from it. I thought I was going mad but now I don't know if I'm going mad or if I am mad or if he's there._

"My queen," said Sif.

"My lady," said the queen.

Sif bowed her head to the queen. Frigg's hand was light on her brow, her fingertips soft at Sif's crown. Then she passed from the sanctum, her skirts whispered along the stones as a wind through leaves.

Sif stood again. Thor was looking at her. Though she knew him to be too obtuse to tease meaning out of the way she held herself, Sif still felt bare beneath his consideration.

"What?" she snapped.

He grinned, unbothered. That was Thor all through.

"I wish you'd had time to know Jane," he said. "You would have liked her."

"If I like her," Sif said, prickling, "it will be for her sake and not yours."

He clapped her on her back. He grinned, still, and she knew he heard what she had not said, which was _I already like her._

"I am glad of you, Sif," he said. "You are a good friend and dear to me."

"Oh, please," she said, but she smiled.

They walked together, companionable, as they had ever been so. When they had first met, Sif introduced by her father to the queen and by the queen to her sons, she had looked at Thor, ruddy and grinning, and known she would like him immensely. She had not thought the same of Loki.

"I have heard from my father you hunted wyrms the other day," said Thor. "You should have told me!"

"You were busy with princely work," said Sif. "I couldn't have dragged you away from such vital, pressing matters of state."

"I would that you had," he grumbled. "Nine wyrms! So Hogun claimed."

"Hogun claimed truly," she said archly. She tossed her hair. "I killed four myself. I would have made it five had Hogun not beat me to it."

"I don't doubt," said Thor, chuckling. Then his laughter subsided and he turned to her as they walked. She knew what he would say even before he said, "Hogun has told me—"

"It's none of his business or of yours," she snapped.

"I have no intention to tell you what to do," said Thor. For all his rages, he had ever been the peacemaker. "But you are my friend, and I care for you. I would hope that you would care for me were I to behave unlike myself."

As if at her ear, she heard Loki say, "Oh, it's too easy," and she knew it was only her mind speaking for him.

Sif drew breath and allowed it out again. He was right. She knew it. He was her friend, and he cared for her. She said, "I thank you for your concern," and only wished it were not so stiff.

Thor said, "Don't thank me for this."

Asgard gleamed at them through the windows, bright and hot with the sun. The sea glittered, flashing as if strewn with stars. Sif stopped at the bend in the corridor. She leaned into the window, looking out to the Bifröst, to the end of the world. Then she looked to Thor, who waited, patient, as he would not have waited before. If she did not speak, she thought he would not press her.

"I dream of Loki," she said.

His face tightened. Pain showed in his mouth. He would have turned from her, she knew it; hadn't she known him nearly all her life? He said, "Sif—"

"No. Listen to me," she said. She drew close to Thor and set her hand on his shoulder. " _Listen_ to me. For once in your blockheaded life, be quiet and listen."

He breathed out. He would not look at her. She curled her fingers in his tunic, curled them till her cropped nails dug into his shoulder. His hair gleamed fair as wheat behind his ears, against his throat. He had turned already.

"I miss him, too," she said, "and that's why you must listen."

Thor closed his eyes. Grief, grief, ever grief. Always grief. She was tired of grief. She hurt with it. She was numb for it. When he spoke, his voice scratched with it.

"I will listen."

How to begin? How to tell it? At his back she saw a shadow, and in that shadow she saw the shape of Loki's cape, his heel turning, the line of his throat. In the window, out the corner of her eye, she saw Loki's jawline: pale, then blue. Behind her lids and against her eyes, his eyes: red, pale green, _red_.

"They're dreams," she said at last, "but they aren't like dreams. They aren't like memories either, they're. They're something else. It's like he's there, talking to me."

She searched Thor's face and found— What did she find? His brow had furrowed. He looked at her as if through a darkened glass. The back of her neck began to prickle.

"Please tell me you dream of him, too," she said.

Slowly, Thor shook his head.

"I do dream of Loki. Every night, I dream of my brother." He looked from her to the window, to Asgard below, the sky beyond. "But they're only memories. Things I wish I had done differently. Things I ought to have said to him."

"But do you talk to him?" she asked urgently. "Do you speak with him as if he were present? Does he answer?"

"Never," said Thor.

The silence which followed this was louder than anything Sif had ever heard. It deafened. It crushed, as a boulder dropped from a great height.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry. Thor, I did not mean to—"

Her tongue, clumsy, stuck to her teeth.

Thor's jaw worked. His lashes fell. He had not turned to her again. Beneath her hand, his shoulder was hard, taut.

"If that is all," he said. "I have duties to which I must attend. I would rather we not—"

She twisted her hand more tightly still in his shirt.

"You said you would listen to me, so you will listen to me!"

He began to turn to her, his face dark like the first clouds in a storm. He remained Thor, after all, but she remained Sif, and she would not cower before him.

"You knew Loki as I knew Loki," she said. "You know how you could see him in one place but he would be in another. How he could cross distances so much faster than you or I."

"My brother is dead," said Thor harshly. "Loki is dead."

"What if he is not dead? What if he lives?"

"He is dead!" Thor snarled. "I saw him fall. If I had tried, I could have caught him, but he fell, and you were not there—"

"And I would have been there had Heimdall not needed me," she shouted at him, "and you are not listening to me!"

"I have no need to!" His face was red, his throat thick. "You are tired. You need to speak with Eir and her healers—"

Sif struck him. His jaw was like stone against her knuckles, then the corner buckled and he turned, her blow driving him back. Thor came up again, and she thought: yes, yes, for she ached to fight. She ached to not think.

"Don't you ever imply I am not conscious of myself," she said. "Don't you _dare_ think to tell me what I am and what I'm not."

She waited for his fist; she expected it. For a moment, she thought he would throw the next punch, and Sif braced. Then he closed his eyes and he lowered his hands. His fingers unbent.

"You're right," he said. He looked to her then, really looked to her, and in his eyes she saw at last how much they had changed, all of them, in so short a time.

"I am sorry, Sif, truly. You are right," he said again. He bowed his head to her.

She stared down at his head. When had Thor ever bent his head to Sif? How his hair shone. How she wished it were dark. She did not know what she wished. She felt Loki's fingers on her wrist, burning with cold. But this was Thor. Thor: her prince, her friend, her sworn shield-brother.

"Thank you," she said. "I'm sorry I—you know."

As he straightened, she mimed punching him. She tapped his chin lightly. Thor smiled at her, and it was nearly a grin.

"You owe me no apologies. I deserved it. I deserved more."

His smile faded. He glanced out the window again, and she knew then she would not push him. Sif turned to look, too, out the window. Their shoulders pressed together.

"If you had struck me," she said, "I wouldn't have told. Not even if the Allfather himself demanded I tell him true."

"I know," said Thor. He smiled briefly at her reflection. "That was but one of the reasons why I couldn't."

"Wouldn't," she said. She looked through her reflection, through his. The moon showed, a pale crescent in the day sky. "You had a choice. I had a choice."

"We all have choices," he said, and his eyes were on the bridge.

Looking to the moon, she thought: Why would Loki show himself to her but not to Thor? Who was she, that Loki would come to her? Thor was his brother, and Loki had loved him once. Perhaps she _was_ mad. Perhaps she was over-tired. Thor had seen Loki fall from the Bifröst as it cracked.

Thor stirred and turned from the window, speaking of duties, and Sif looked to the bridge.




 

 _v: heimdall ever-watching._

What remained of the Bifröst flew forth from Asgard much as it had ever done; though now it shone dully, the color leeched from it so that it but faintly glimmered, as distant as the memory of a dream. The jagged end of it leered over the edge of the world, and there Heimdall ever-watching stood sentinel. As a child, Sif had wondered at him and feared him, too, for who but Heimdall could know of all her little childhood crimes and who but Heimdall might speak of them to her father, Lieff of the heavy hand?

"Sif," said Heimdall as she drew near to him. He did not turn.

She stood at his shoulder. Heimdall Stargazer looked out over the infinite expanse of the cosmos, his gold-burnt eyes open to all the stars and all the worlds, for no door and no gate could be closed to his consideration. Sif looked out as he looked out and saw only stars and the incestuous, twisting nebulae which spun with infinitesimal slowness through the heavens. A yawning shadow remained, low in her comprehension of the skies, where the Bifröst in its breaking had torn a hole through whatever stuff composed this, Heimdall's domain.

Now he turned fractionally to her. His gaze fell upon her. As a child, she would have shrunk beneath the weight of that regard, but she was no more that child and his regard was not so heavy.

"Have you come with a question?" he asked. His voice, resonant with the power which dwelt within Heimdall born of nine mothers and which he wielded as surely as his blade forged of nine sisters, rang with the fullness and grave certainty of a large bell well struck.

"Perhaps I only wanted to speak with you," she said lightly.

Though he did not smile, she heard it or thought she heard it. Dryly, for Heimdall was ever dry, he said, "I have long known you, Sif, daughter of Astra, Astra, wife of Lieff. You come with a question, though I welcome your company."

Now she felt the child. Sif cinched her mouth to one side, rueful.

Heimdall returned to his stars. He would wait until she asked or he would dismiss her; the Bifröst, though shattered, was sacred to Heimdall and all but the king were beholden to his sovereignty over it.

"I know you can see into all the worlds," said Sif. "Can you also see into Helheimr?"

"Helheimr is but one realm," Heimdall replied, "and neither it nor its queen are closed to my sight. What purpose do you have with that dead world?"

She had wondered a short time how to ask it, but Sif was not one for vague statements or tricksome leads, and Heimdall and Loki, whose silver tongue thrived on such vague and tricksome things, had never been of a kind. She would ask and be done with it. Still—Loki had frozen Heimdall and discharged all the dormant force of the Bifröst upon Jötunheimr; because of Loki the bridge was lost to them and through the bridge, all else which lay beyond Godenheim.

"Can you see Loki there?" she asked of Heimdall, whom Loki had feared and who had no lost love for the fallen king.

Heimdall turned fully to her, and his gaze was like a stone dropped around her neck, one which would see her bent at his feet. The knowing of his endless, golden eyes was terrible beyond the thought of it. Sif held his gaze. Her heart twisted up, and she found it was not for fear of Heimdall, but for fear he would turn her away.

"Please," she said. "I must know."

"If he is dead," said Heimdall, "then he is Hel's thrall. There is no seat for Loki World-killer in the holy hall Valhalla."

Sif drew nearer still to Heimdall. He inclined his head that he might follow her. Lowly she said, "But if he is not dead—" and Heimdall's face hardened.

He turned from her. The stars opened to him. His face was as stone, then his eyes flickered; his mouth tightened.

"Is he there?" Sif ached for her lance, her sword. Inaction bit at her. How her heart turned viciously in her chest—and yet she could not move. "Can you see him?"

"If he is there," said Heimdall, his face still lifted to the incomprehensible sky, "then he is hidden from me, for I can neither hear nor see him."

The cosmos contracted. For a moment she thought she could hear the Bifröst singing again. If she had thought her heart vicious before, now she thought it cruel. Grief—grief, always grief, but a wild, mad hope as well and another thing beneath that which she could not name. She thought of crimson eyes, flesh like indigo.

"Am I dead," Loki had whispered, "or are you dead?"

"Then Loki lives," she said.

"I cannot say." Heimdall looked to her again, and his countenance was intense, searching. What he read in her face, she dared not think. "He may have cloaked himself in Helheimr, though for what purpose I cannot know."

"So he may still be dead," she said at last.

"He may be," said Heimdall, "and I hope that he is so. Yet Loki claimed to know secret ways between the worlds to which even I am blind. If he found one such way as he fell, then it may be he still lives beyond my sight."

Sif looked to the stars. The cosmos spun on and on and on. The vastness of it consumed her. How many stars? How many worlds? The Bifröst lay dead at her feet.

Heimdall spoke again: "If it is so, that Loki lives, should he return to Asgard, I will bring all the power of my office upon him."

She turned her back upon the sky. "You will do what you must," she said. She bowed to him. "Thank you for looking."

He inclined his head, just so. "Thank you for asking. I will look again and let the Allfather know of what I find or do not find. Ill portents abound."

His gaze turned from her. The universe's many distant lights found magnification in his eyes.

"You may leave when you wish," said Heimdall.

Sif bowed again. Her heels rang dully against the bridge. Once it would have sung to her, she thought; but that was before Loki had been king. She felt the weight of the stars on her shoulders long after she left the Bifröst.





	6. 5.

_i: loki dreaming._

Jötunheimr cracked. It split; it crumbled; it fell out of the sky, and the ash tree caught the pieces like so many bits of earth in its fingers. The temple stood out from the juncture of three branches at a precipitous sideways angle, and from its narrow windows dark figures fell. Loki watched them as they fell; he watched and did nothing. It was good that they should fall. It was right. He knew this to be so. 

For the vermin shall be routed from their holes and the monsters set to flame, that all the worlds should be better for their dying. So will Asgard lead us. So will Asgard cleanse us. So will Asgard make us pure, make us strong, make us mighty as Asgard, holy Asgard, and as bright. This is the word of the Allfather, and the Allfather's word is Asgard's word and Asgard's word is true. Darkness must give way to light. Corruption must give way to healing. We will be clean.

"We will all be clean," he said. The words shivered in the night air; his breath was white. Odd that it should be so. It was, he thought, quite pleasant out. Warm, but not so warm as to stifle. He breathed out again. A pale cloud fogged the air.

They fell fewer now. A little pile showed between the tree's roots, the corpses dwarfed by the ash's girth. He watched, dispassionate, as the last handful of jötnar fell from their temple which was both sacrosanct and profane. Now it was dead. He did not smile, but he did not weep.

It was good. It was right.

"Asgard shall be a beacon," he said. "A light in the darkness."

At his side, Thor said, "I know _that_. Father goes on about it often enough."

Loki looked down to his brother. He was young and fair and round of face. A child. Thor tipped his head to one side. His cheek was still thick with baby fat. Loki had not been so strong, so square. He remembered that.

"Are those monsters?" Thor asked, interested. "Have you killed them all?"

"I did what was needed," said Loki.

"You did!" Thor grinned and struck Loki's arm, then his smile caught; it faded, and he frowned. "That means I don't get to slay any of the beasts."

The moon glimmered, nearly new. It hung like a ghost over the ash tree. In the highest branches, held aloft by the strongest boughs, the royal complex lay broken and silent. A pitiable thing, next to the glory and wonder of Asgard and her golden palace.

"I would that I could have," Thor went on. He scowled tigerishly. "I would have chopped off all their heads. Like wyrms."

Loki said, "Well, give me your hand. We'll see if there are any throats left for you to cut."

Thor took Loki's outstretched hand and yelped. "Your hand's freezing!" He snatched his own hand back.

Loki turned his hand over. It was only a hand: pale skin, long bones and thin joints, the tendons showing in the back. A certain redness flared at his knuckles, but it always did. He had not goosebumped. A vein stood out at his wrist, where it crossed the musculature. He turned his hand again. Loki bent his fingers, one by one. The bones slithered, shadows beneath his skin. He closed his hand and dropped it.

"A bit chilly out," he said.

"Come _on_ ," said Thor. "No one cares for your hand. I want to fight the monsters."

"Then, by all means," said Loki. He bowed to his brother. "Lead the way."

Thor would. Of course he would. He clambered down the hill as swiftly as he might, heedless as a child was of nearing rocks, of little pits in the soil that might trip him up. Loki followed. Of course he followed.

The ash tree towered over them, colossal and without measure. What light showed there at its roots was meager, for the tree's branches were heavy with leaves and the moon waned so thin as to venture into meaninglessness. The soil was dry. Nothing grew where the tree's shadow fell, and the tree's shadow fell far about it. The air was still and silent and dead.

"I'll race you up!" Thor shouted.

He'd found stairs cut into the side of the tree, wedges like cankers which marred the trunk. Loki looked up before he ascended in pursuit of Thor. A strange silver sheen coated the underside of the leaves, and the illusory glow they gave off dappled his eyes, his hands. Like bubbles in a bath, refracting the light in many colors. A blue shadow wandered over his wrist. He drew his hand into his sleeve.

"Hurry up!" Thor cried. He peered round a bend at Loki. His hair gleamed even in the dark. "Last one to the temple's a big, stinking jötunn."

"But you already are," said Loki.

Thor laughed and vanished again. Loki ascended in his wake.

The tree whispered about him. Leaves rustled. A samara, thrown loose, brushed Loki's cheek as a finger across the bone. He had thought perhaps there would be screaming or soft moans, all the graceless sounds of beasts dying. The damned, weeping. But for Thor's thundersome steps and that susurration of the wind, all was quiet. Even his own breath, like spun ice in the air, slipped silently from his lips.

The temple, then. The temple, first. Nearly flat on its side, its arches had cracked; the roof had collapsed half into the sanctuary. The bough that held the bulk of the temple threatened to swallow the single entrance that remained. Thor had gone.

Loki scaled the branch, held out for balance. The bark, lined with deep grooves, caught at his fingertips; it bit his skin. The leaves murmured, and their murmuring washed over him as a wave at sea, a tidal roar which threatened to drown him. So thrown, he slipped into the temple.

His shoulder struck the floor first, then his head. A star burst. He thought he would slip and threw his arm out to stop it. The floor was level beneath him. His fingers skated over ice. He drew breath, slow through his teeth. Frost laced his lungs, his throat, his tongue. The world had frozen.

Loki opened his eyes. Thor had gone farther into the temple, up to a dais once ringed with cloth. He had torn it down. Silver hooks jangled, hanging from the ceiling. Jötunheimr was a cold, dead world without color or song, but the cloth was a glowing silver, a silver which shone so brightly as to look like something borne of Asgard. Moonlight circled Thor; it lit his hair. Loki did not know where it came from. The ceiling was whole.

A deep basin stood at the top of the dais. Thor turned his face down to it.

"Come away from there," said Loki. What trap might the jötnar set to snare a prince?

Thor did not listen. Thor never listened. Loki scrambled to his knees, then his feet. Stars lit behind his eyes, a cavalcade of fireworks. The world rolled beneath his feet, as branches in a wind.

He said, " _Thor_ —"

"Loki," said Thor. He turned. His face had screwed up with puzzlement. A hesitation slowed his tongue. "Loki. It's a baby."

Loki came to stand at last by his brother, his little brother. Thor pointed into the basin. In the well—

What had he expected? A beast. A monster. A demon. A creature like the creatures his father spoke of when he spoke of the great wars, of the evils of the jötnar, of the petty cruelties inherent to their natures. But it was only a baby.

"It's crying," said Thor. "Loki, why is it crying?"

For that was what the baby did: it squalled, fierce as any storm. Tears slicked its little face. Its hair was black and curled tight against its scalp. A silver cloth had been wrapped about it, but the child had freed one arm. Its hand grasped.

"It's very small," said Loki slowly, "and very alone."

"Why is it alone?" Thor asked. "You aren't supposed to leave a baby alone."

Those fingers uncurled then fisted again. The baby turned its face to them, to their voices, and cried all the louder. Loki's throat had tightened. He swallowed carefully to clear it. All alone, he thought, in a temple. But whoever had left the child here had taken care to wrap it.

"Are you loved?" he whispered to the baby.

It was too small still to focus its eyes, too young to see beyond its nose. A monster, he thought. A monster. A baby. He touched his finger to its palm. The babe closed its hand about his first knuckle.

"Where is its mother?" Thor demanded.

"Not it," said Loki.

His brother stared up at him, blue eyes creasing at the corners. The baby's crying filled the empty corners of the temple. Loki wanted to pick the child up and stick him in Thor's face and say, "How is this child different from you?"

For one, Loki thought, Thor wasn't a monster. The child's fingers tightened. Loki turned from Thor. He looked down into the basin. Thor shifted. He looked, too. How small the infant, how thin. If his skin weren't so blue, he might look as normal as Thor.

"Not it," Loki said again. "Him."

"Where is _his_ mother?" Thor asked. "He's only a baby. He shouldn't be left all alone in the cold."

"The cold doesn't bother him like it bothers you," Loki said.

"But he shouldn't be alone," Thor insisted. "Where's his father?"

"His father is here."

Loki lifted his head from the basin.

The temple had brightened as with the coming of day, but then it wasn't the temple but the throne room of the Allfather. The emblem of the rising sun showed at Odin's back. He bore the symbols of his station. He carried the weight of his office across his shoulders. His cape dragged behind him, an endless length of red velvet which hid the steps as he descended.

"Remove your hands from him," Odin commanded.

Loki drew back his finger from the child's hand. The babe had begun to calm. Now he cried again, screaming into the vast and shining silences of Odin's great chamber.

"I was only—"

"I know what you were doing," said Odin. His eye flashed, like lightning in a storm. "You would turn my son against me."

He rose as a thundercloud over Loki. Thor had gone. Thor had never been there. Only Loki remained before Odin. Loki sank to his knees before the basin.

"He cried," Loki said. "I only wanted to comfort him."

"He is not yours to comfort," said Odin thunderously. "Jötunheimr has no claim on him."

Loki flexed his fingers. His hand was cold, his palm slick as if with ice. Staring up into his father's face, he thought he had never felt so very numb before in all his life.

"But he has a claim on Jötunheimr," he said.

The words dropped like pins.

"Yes," said Odin. "He has a claim."

Loki licked his lips. They hurt, pricked through with cold. He searched Odin and found nothing.

"Why," he said. His throat closed, frozen tight. Loki forced the rest through: "Why did you take him?"

"He will be king," said Odin.

"King of what?" It ripped from Loki's mouth. It tore his lips. "Of the monsters? Of the, the _jötnar_?"

"He will be a wise king for Jötunheimr," Odin said remotely, "wiser than Laufey. He will keep the peace when Laufey is gone. I will teach him. I will raise him. I will guide him, so that when he is king he will be a just king, a good king who will not raise war."

What look would cross Odin's face when he gazed at the child in the basin? Loki dared not blink. His eyes stung, drying.

"But will you love him?" he asked, then he shouted it; he snarled it so it broke in his chest: " _Will you love him!_ "

"Does it matter?" Odin asked. In the sun at his back, the shadow of a tree. Odin's face shone, bright as day. "What I do, I do for the good of Asgard. That is the duty of a king."

Loki scraped his nails over the stones, scraped them so his fingers hurt with it. His chest worked too quickly. The baby, he thought. The baby. The baby. As a child Loki had looked at Odin standing with his hand upon Thor's shoulder, and he had seen how the sun shone in their hair, how it shone in Frigg's hair, and he had known he was unlike.

"But what of your duties as a father?" He clawed at his chest. "What of— What of your duties to me? To your son?"

"Asgard will always come first," said Odin.

"You mean Thor will always come first," Loki spat. "Your son, your _true_ son. I knew it. I saw it even as a child, how you preferred him, how you looked on him and smiled to see yourself—"

Odin loomed before him. The sun rose at his back.

"You are my son," he boomed. "I am your father."

"No," said Loki.

The sun winked out.




 

_ii: memory: loki._

"Here you are," said Thor. 

Loki looked up then turned his face away, for the sun swallowed Thor and blinded him. Then Thor crouched beside Loki on the riverbank and he resolved out of the light.

"I knew you'd be here," Thor continued. He would have gone on in this self-congratulatory vein had Loki, warily watching the thick brush that ran alongside the channel, not abandoned his crafts and made to push up off his chest.

Thor put his hand on Loki's back and shoved him down flat again. Loki swore and lashed at Thor, but of course Thor was so huge and so ox-like now Loki only hurt his thumb. Loki stuck his thumb in his mouth and glared.

"Don't worry," Thor said, unbothered. "Sif thinks you're in the hideaway. If you aren't, she intends to surprise you there."

Loki pulled his thumb free of his teeth. He glared, still, and had no intention of stopping.

"Don't you mean Thorheimr?" he asked poisonously.

Thor puffed up outrageously at this.

"You agreed to it," he protested. "You said we could call it Thorheimr!"

"Only under repeated duress," said Loki. He turned from Thor and back to his contemplations of the river, how it flowed against the bank as it followed this little crook. He set his chin on the back of his hand and said, "I'll never call it Thorheimr."

Thor stuck his jaw out.

"If you didn't want to call it Thorheimr, then you shouldn't have agreed to call it that."

"I wouldn't have," said Loki slowly, as to an idiot or, as was the case, to Thor, "if a certain oaf, who will remain nameless as we both know full well who he is, hadn't threatened to punch me in the nose."`

The primeval jutting of Thor's jaw softened. It retracted, and in a moment he looked less a barbarian fresh out of the caves and more like Thor, brash and thoughtless and now contrite. Thor reddened ferociously. He looked away.

"Sorry," he said at last. "I shouldn't have done it."

With great airs, Loki said, "I do not accept your apology at this time."

He half-expected Thor to turn on him at that, but Thor only sighed and let his shoulders slumped and looked even more contrite. Now Loki found he was the one who felt guilty, which was absurd and even more absurd the more he thought of it. His shoulders itched, his back too. His neck itched worst of all.

If Thor really wanted Loki to forgive him, Loki thought, he wouldn't insist on calling it Thorheimr. He would, of his own volition, tell Father he held the threat of brutish violence over Loki to get Loki to do what he wanted. Loki plucked viciously at the grass. Father would probably congratulate Thor on his proactive problem solving attitude.

"I am sorry," Thor said. The words were awkward coming out of his mouth and they hung awkwardly in the air between them. "Truly."

But he didn't offer to call it Lokaheimr, now, did he? Loki tore out the broken bits of grass and tufts of loam and fuzzy whatever it was and threw them to the river. The water whispered along its course and didn't mind as it bore the refuse out to sea.

Thor sighed and dropped onto his back. His legs stuck out off the bank, then his knees bent and his boots dipped into the water and bobbed with the current. Loki threw a tuft of grass at Thor's knee, but the wind took it and threw it back in Loki's mouth.

Loki was still sputtering and clawing at his face when Thor got up on one elbow and asked, "What did you do to make Sif so mad?"

Loki curled his tongue and spat into the water. "I didn't do anything!" he snapped back. He ran a hand down his tongue and then shook his fingers out.

"Sif feels very strongly that you did do something," said Thor.

"And what did you say?" Loki demanded. He glowered at Thor, who had the grace to look hunted, if confused as to why he should look so.

"Say what?" Thor ventured.

"You're my brother," Loki said, "which means you're supposed to say I didn't do it, because you're supposed to believe me first and foremost, even when you don't know what it is I'm supposed to have done."

Thor relaxed. His gaze wandered skyward, to where the pale clouds chuffed along before a strong breeze. He said, as if it were the most obvious thing, which Loki supposed it was, "That's what I told her. That you didn't do it."

"Oh," said Loki. He looked to his fingers. He turned the strands of grass over. "How did she take it?"

"Not very well," said Thor sadly. "She called me a liar and an accomplice and threatened to throw me off the ledge."

Loki laughed. He could imagine it perfectly, how she would have shone, incandescent and suffused with fury, like a fire burning hotter still in a strong wind instead of going out. He wished he'd known to be there, to see how Sif would cross her arms and pace the hideaway, her hair hanging loose down her shoulders, loose and tangled and shining where it caught the sun.

He glanced sidelong at Thor, who was frowning up at the clouds. They threw small, thin shadows across Thor's face, fleeting shadows which passed not long after they came upon him. That guilty itching picked at Loki's neck. He didn't much like guilt.

Loki twisted the grass together and said, "I did do it, though."

"What!" Thor shoved up onto both elbows. "What about everything you just said about how I should believe in you?"

"You should!" Loki said. He held his chin high. "But yes, it just so happens that in this one particular instance I did do it."

Thor groaned and fell back again. He covered his face. "Loki!"

"It was only a little thing," Loki said soothingly. "It isn't as if I killed anyone. All I took was her knife."

"You took her knife?" Thor shouted into his hands. He threw his arms wide and stared at Loki as if he'd never seen him before. "Are you daft? Her mother gave her that knife."

"I know," Loki said. "It's a very nice knife."

"Do you have any idea how mad she's going to be about that?"

Loki thought of Sif, how her hair had tumbled around her shoulders as she pinned him, straddled him, held him down with her hands and thighs and square hips. How her teeth flashed. He breathed out. His neck itched again, too hot this time. It wasn't guilt that made him itch now, he thought. He didn't know what to name it.

"I have an idea," said Loki.

"And you made me lie for you," Thor pressed.

"I didn't make you!"

"Yes, you did!" said Thor. "You're my brother. Which means I have to stand up for you, which means I told her whatever it was she was so certain you'd done, you hadn't done it."

"You didn't have to do it," Loki protested.

Thor looked at him in outrage. "What— I don't like lying, Loki!"

Loki sighed and rolled over onto his back. He dropped his feet where Thor's head would go if he laid back down.

"I know you don't," he said. "I'm sorry. Thank you for doing it, though."

Thor made a face, but he gave as Loki knew he would. For all his tempers, Thor was so very soft. He scooted around and laid his head down by Loki's feet.

"You're going to have to give Sif her knife."

"Oh, I will," Loki said. "As soon as I find it."

"You _lost_ it?"

"She pulled me out of a tree!"

"I would that she'd hit your head," said Thor.

Loki turned the grass whistle about and pressing it to his lips, whispered a charm into its veins.

"No," he said to Thor, "you don't."

Then he pursed his lips and began to play. The song was a simple one, for however he'd enchanted the grass it was still only grass, but he embellished it as he could so it twined in the air above them like the stroke of a bell which lingered as the tongue stilled. The notes lilted, turning sideways and then righting again. Loki ran his fingers down the whistle. The grass shivered under his fingertips.

"Cheater," said Thor.

Loki lowered his whistle.

"It isn't cheating."

"Tricks and lies," said Thor.

"Magic," Loki countered. "Call it truly by its name. You don't like it because you aren't any good at it."

"It's all smokes and mirrors and dreams," said Thor. "It isn't straightforward or honest."

Loki snorted. "That would be why you're no good at it. You can't do magic if you aren't true with yourself."

"I'm always true with myself," Thor said, indignant.

"With a sword," said Loki. He blew gently at the whistle. "Not with magic."

"And you are?" Thor asked.

"Always," said Loki.

He piped a rude note at Thor to teach him how to be respectful toward others. No doubt having learned his lesson quite thoroughly and secretly vowing to reform at his earliest opportunity, Thor turned onto his side, looked Loki gravely in the face, and punched Loki in the shin.

"Fuck!" said Loki. He brought his legs up to his chest.

"I'm telling Mother you swore," said Thor smugly.

"I'll tell her you hit me!"

"Not if I throw you in the river first," said Thor.

Loki glared at Thor over his knees. He sneered. "Please. We both know you're too lead-footed to catch me."

"I found you here, didn't I?"

"Yes," said Loki, "but you didn't catch me, did you?" and he thrust his legs out, rolled onto his feet, and staggered for the woods as Thor struggled to sit upright.

"Cheat!" Thor shouted after him.

"Slow!" Loki shouted back, then he vanished into the shadows.




 

_iii: loki dreaming._

In dream, song. Dreaming and in his dream, he slept. Loki slept like a child in the silted embrace of twining roots, thick toes of a thick tree pillowing him, holding him, hiding him; and as he slept, the wind sang, and the leaves sang, and the soil sang, and the root beneath his cheek sang. He did not know the song, for it was an old song, old and forgotten for its age. Night, cool and sweet, laid down upon him. Dreaming, nevertheless he did not dream; he dreamt only of the tree and of the earth and of the night and the wind which blew gently through it all. 

Into his dream, another.

The wind stilled. His fingers coiled in the dirt. He felt it get up under his nails, grit and scratching, drawing him out of sleep. He would not wake. He had no desire to do so. He was cold; he was tired; he was worn and thoroughly so, used up and scooped out and exhausted of all he had, empty with nothing left to give and nothing more to take. No one to give to, no one to take from. He had done it to himself. He had done it gladly. The vermin shall be routed, and what was Loki if not a rat biting at his father's hand?

Footsteps in the earth. Toes sinking into the soil, soft with rain. He knew that stride. He knew the low-slung arch of her foot, how her heel punctuated it as an exclamation. She'd a scar on the heel of her left foot where a snake had bitten her, and:

Loki had set his fingers in the arch and drawn the venom out, coaxed it from her puckered flesh with the tips of his fingers. It had flowed out like pus from a sore, little yellow beads conjured out of her blood.

"Ah," said Sif.

"Can you walk?"

"Of course I can walk," she said.

He gave her his hand and she held it, just a moment, her fingernails biting into the underside of his fingers. Then she let go. She took a step, another, hobbling on her toes. Her calf muscles fluttered. Her left ankle bent. Loki made to touch her back, to brace her. He hesitated. Her shoulders had hunched.

"Would you like for me to carry you to the healers?"

"I can carry myself," she said shortly.

He'd dropped his hand. She took three more steps, each harder than the last. Loki caught up to her. Quietly, he slipped his fingers around her elbow. She turned on him, her lips flaring. Her eyes sparked, her hair, too, where the sun caught the red in it.

"I told you I could carry myself!"

"I'm not carrying you," he said. He began to rub his thumb in a circle then stopped. "Just— If you should fall."

"I won't fall." She forged on, dropping more weight on her right foot. "Why does everyone always expect me to fall?"

Had he got all the venom? He felt for it in her blood, the small heat which meant sickness. A tiny flare—but that was where she bled.

He walked alongside her through the brush. The stream gurgled on behind them, uncaring for the little drama which had unfolded beside it or the snake which floated, dead, upon it. He wished he'd thought to find her shoes. It had happened very quickly. Loki had waded into the current and turned to tease Sif for taking so long. Her hair fell like a storm cloud about her face, and she'd scowled so ferociously his head had nearly floated off. There'd been a snake at her raised foot, a watersnake. He'd seen it last when he should have seen it first. He'd said, "Sif," and she set her foot down.

In the thicket, he ventured, "No one expects you to fall."

"Everyone does," she snapped. She glowered sidelong at Loki then her face closed up and she looked away. "My father does."

Ah, Loki thought.

"I'm not your father," he said. "So far as I know."

"Don't be clever," she said gruffly.

They walked on, silent. Her shoulder bumped his. Under his fingers, her arm tightened, the muscles pulling as she held herself apart.

"I don't expect you to fall," he said.

She looked at him. A shadow, cast by the movement of a bird through the trees, shivered across her tanned face. She'd a mole by her nose. His thumb itched to cover it.

"Isn't that why you're holding my arm?" she asked.

He feigned interest in a passing tree. "It's such a nice day for a stroll."

"Me, and the snake," said Sif, pausing for breath, "and you."

Loki leaned into her. He whispered, "You could always shake me off."

"I could beat your tongue," she said, but she hadn't shaken his hand from his arm.

Now. Now. When was now? _What_ , he thought. It was not a question of when or of where. An echo murmured in his ears, as of chimes stilling. Muted footsteps in the earth. Someone approached him. Sif. He knew that step, the coarse whisper of her trousers. How she balanced her weight on her toes as she climbed. He turned his face away.

She stopped beside him. He heard her breathe out, breathe in, out again. Her toes curled in the soil. She was barefoot. Bare-legged, too, when she knelt at his shoulders, her knees brushing his back. Her hair fell against his nape. She pushed it away.

Leaning over him, Sif said, "I know that you're awake."

A knot in his chest, a small one, a nothing. Loki breathed out through his lips, as if sighing.

"How so?"

"Aside from the part where you just spoke," she said. 

There it was again, a little answering flicker somewhere deep in his bones, rising to the challenge. 

"Your shoulders are too tense."

She set her hand on the left shoulder and pushed. Loki came up again. 

"You breathe too lightly. You're trying too hard not to draw attention."

Her fingers ran down his back, between his shoulder blades, tracing the motion of his spine. His chest rose, too swollen. It was a game, he thought. They were children, and he had fallen asleep in his mother's gardens. 

Her hand stilled on his back, beneath the sweep of the left blade.

"I saw you turn your face away," she said. "As I came up the trail."

He opened his eyes. The hour, if an hour it was, was late, the night thick with all its regalia. He saw clearer than he ought.

"Show me," Sif said. "Show me your face. Truly."

"I was always true with you," he said. He did not turn.

"Only when it suited you," she said. "Stop running from me or whatever it is you're running from. Show me."

He imagined he could see her shadow cast upon the root, or perhaps her profile captured in a whorl of the bark. He never could catch her likeness.

"I already showed you," he said.

"Then show me again."

Her fingers, at his back. Her breath at his shoulder, her hair slithering to hide in his throat. Even here Sif subsumed him; always it was so. She closed her hand around his arm. 

"Loki," she said.

He turned. What was it he wanted of her? To scream, then, and to fall away from him? To bring her glaive around to press the tip to his throat? She carried no weapon with her, nor a shield on her back. Her mouth tightened, but she did not scream; she did not fall away. So brave, he thought; and the tenderness of it made him ill. He did not want for tenderness.

"So have you come to kill me after all?" he wondered into the space between them. "Did you find your courage where you hid it?"

"Enough," she said. "No more of your tricks."

"Is that the maiden or the warrior?" he jeered.

Her face hardened. The change began at her jaw, always her jaw, her teeth setting first. He would goad her, and she would strike, and in her absence he would sleep again. She held his gaze. A little movement at the corner of his eye, and Loki thought: now, now was when she would do it, now was when Sif, swift and sure and so very sharp, would slay him and leave him. 

She set her fingers on his cheek, beneath the ridge of bone. He could not breathe for the heat of her touch. A fire mirrored in her hair. The roots were burning. He smelled the smoke.

"You won't trap me with your tongue," Sif promised. Her thumb was an anchor pushing into the juncture of his jaw. "I know you, Loki Silvertongue."

He stared, unblinking, up at her. Did her fingers burn? Did her palm? Frozen, deadened, rotted by his skin.

"You've never known me," he said.

"I've always known you," she said. "Since we were children, and my father first brought me to the palace. Do you remember?"

He remembered. What had he thought of her? A tall, loud girl with a face like a knife. He'd said as much, and she had reddened and called him a pig. No one had called him pig before. Shadow, he'd heard as he eavesdropped around corners. The pest. Second son. Never pig.

"So you think you know me?" He smiled at her as he had smiled at that sharp-edged girl. "Because when we were children I called you my friend?"

"You never called me your friend," Sif said quietly.

"Is that what this is all about?" His breath came in spurts. Her hand burned him. "Your hurt feelings?"

"And yours," said Sif, "if you'd shut up and be honest for once."

"Oh, I'm always honest," he said.

"You always lie," she said.

He reached up then and set his hand on her cheek as she had set hers on his. She stilled, but he had seen how she flinched, how she recoiled from his touch, his cold touch. A shadow darkened her skin.

"I never lied," he said softly. "You just couldn't distinguish the different truths."

Her nails turned against him. Her hair coiled like clouds of smoke. She was bare, all of her, and only the shadows hid her from him. Was he bare to her eyes?

"So what truth is this?" she asked. She stroked her thumb down his jaw, to his throat. A brand. "Why do you make yourself look like this?"

"I don't make anything," he said cuttingly. "I was born like this, of my mother and my father."

She shook her head. The smoke in her hair trembled.

"Odin—"

"Not him," said Loki. "My other father."

Sif looked at him and he saw it in her eyes, oh, he saw it: the truth. So kill me, he thought, but Sif had never done what he expected of her. Mercies when he wanted cruelty, cruelties when he wanted mercy.

"What are you saying?" she asked at last. She refused it, still.

He touched his thumb to the corner of her mouth. He had always loved that corner, how it creased, how it deepened, the shadow that clung to it. Her lips paled, the blood driven from them.

"At the very end of the last war," Loki whispered, "the great king Odin took home many prizes. He took home the source of the jötnar's power. He took the holy texts. He took the scrolls of ice magic."

Her lips parted; they moved slowly now. See how his touch corrupted. Her eyes did not waver. Her hand on his cheek, how it _burned_ ; he had never felt such heat.

"What else did he take?" she asked, steady even as her lips turned against her.

"A souvenir," Loki said, "but a very special one. Something he could tame."

Sif loomed over him. She shone somehow, but that was a trick of his eyes. She always shone. He could not let her go. He would have to drive her away, he thought detachedly, or else he would never be rid of her. Smoke in her hair and fire in her touch. That he could burn in her arms and be freed.

"You can't be a jötunn," she said. "I grew alongside you. I know you. I would have _known_."

"You," he said. It was venom in his teeth, poison on his tongue. "You, who never knew the truth of anything."

"And what truths did you know?" she snarled. "Tell me, Loki. I want to know. I want to know why it is you would throw this on me when it's yours to bear, too."

He did not know where they were, how they'd got there. Everything spun away from him. Only Sif remained, her hand on his jaw, her hair at his throat, her cheek beneath his fingers. The years opened between them. She said:

"What was it you thought when you said I should marry Thor and be done with it?"

"I saw the same thing everyone else saw," he said. "I saw that you loved him."

"Then you're as blind as everyone else," said Sif.

The smoke got in his eyes. Sif got in his eyes.

"What of you?" His lips were dry, cracked, seared. "What did you see?"

"Loki," she said. "Insufferable, stupid, clever Loki. When I left my mother's house. When I came to the palace. I thought you hated me." Her fingers fanned over his cheek. "But that wasn't it."

He tightened his fingers on her cheek. The bone bit into his fingertips. She'd darkened, frostbit, and yet still she flickered with firelight.

Loki rose against her.

"Kill me," he said. "That's what you're here for. That's what you want. You're the warrior and I'm the monster, so do it and be done with it."

Her fingers spasmed. She stared in horror at him. At him. Not because of him.

"I'm not going to kill you," she cried. "Loki—"

He cut her off: "Why? Why won't you end it? Look at me," he shouted. "I am the frost giant. I am the monster. I am the changeling in the cradle, and if you don't throw me out then I will poison you."

She raised her voice at him again: "You aren't a monster!"

"I was _always_ the monster," he hissed. "I was always this."

" _You were never a monster!_ "

"Look at me!" he roared. He pressed into her hands, into her chest, her shoulders, her hot embrace like the heart of a conflagration. His skin ached with her heat. "Look at me and tell me what you see!"

"Loki," she shouted. "Loki! Who lives!"

Her nails bit into his face. She held on to him; she held him, savagely, near.

"I thought you were dead," she said harshly through her teeth, "I thought you had died."

"I should have," he said, "I should have."

"Don't," she commanded, "no. No. You're alive. That means something. That must mean something. Loki—"

"Why won't you do it?" He pressed closer to her, close so he could feel her heart beating and beating, her breath on his mouth. "I never thought you were one for mercy. Sif, brave Sif, the greatest Asgard has to offer, and she can't kill even one lowly jötunn."

"I won't kill you," she said.

He could have wept for it. Perhaps he did. She stroked her fingers over his cheek, down the side of his nose. It was not gentle.

"I'm going to save you," she said.

"And then what?" he whispered. "Then what will you do? Will you bring the criminal to the Allfather for his punishment? Will you let Thor do what you cannot?"

"You are his brother," Sif said. "You know Thor would never hurt you."

So close, it was as if they kissed, as if they entwined as lovers. He licked his lip and felt it on hers.

"Do you really believe," he said into her mouth, "that Asgard would welcome me?"

"No," she said.

He closed his eyes for it hurt; it did. He had not thought it would. You are no longer of Asgard, he thought; but how he longed to be.

Sif cradled his face. She lifted him up, up from where he had fallen, and her hands on his skin were brands, but they were strong, too, and they were steady.

"But I would," Sif challenged.

Loki opened his eyes.




 

_iv: memory: loki._

Night fell over Asgard. A half moon peeked now and then through the clouds, which thickened in the east and spilled down the mountains and over the city where it clustered brightest in the cradle. In an hour, snow. A certain bite in the air told Loki the snow would come. 

The study, however, was warm and kept thusly by a network of pipes laid out to convey heat from the thermal vents and slow-moving magma of the mountains to the many chambers of the palace. Loki had thought to explain it once to Thor when they were children and Thor had wondered aloud that the palace should be so hot when ice covered the windows. Thor had looked nonplussed, then he'd laughed and said, "You only need call it magic." A determined lack of curiosity. That was Thor.

Loki set his head against the window and looked out over the courtyard below. His breath fogged the glass. On the other side of the window, an icy doily had crept across the frame. Lights had come on about the courtyard, fat globes shining into the dark and catching the first few snowflakes as they tumbled wildly out of the clouds. The courtyard was empty now. Sif and Thor had gone.

He turned from the window. He'd a journal in his hand. He tapped it against his thigh, one-two, one-two, and wondered that he'd picked it up. Why had he taken it from the desk? So he'd something to look at and feign absolute interest in should either Sif or his brother wander in and see him at the window. Loki rubbed at his brow and dragged his hand down to his mouth.

"Pathetic," he said to his fingers, which was unfair, categorically so. They'd done nothing to him. Loki slapped the book harder on his thigh and dropped into the chair nearest the window. His leg stung.

"Thoroughly and unquestionably pathetic," he told his reflection. Then he made a face. He wished he'd straightened his hair. No one would ever take him seriously looking so very bushy and young. Certainly Sif would not.

He said it again: "Pa- _the_ -tic," dragging all the syllables out for maximum shaming, and oh, he was shamed.

He threw himself against the chair's high back. Grand and grandly stuffed, it threatened to swallow him. Probably he should have selected a less ostentatious and very fat chair in which to throw a fit. Loki laid his legs out before him and crossed them rightways, then leftways.

"Might as well see what we've got," he said to the room. He waited politely for an answer, but of course the room had nothing of worth to say. If he'd company, he felt quite strongly the same would apply to them.

With a little flourish Loki flipped the journal open. He looked to the first page. He looked up then down again. The page remained unchanged. He turned to the second page, the third page, the fourth and the fifth, then he skipped the rest and went straight to the middle of the journal, then the very back.

"Oh, you must be joking," he said. The room could not defend itself against such an accusation and so it accepted his scorn.

Loki clapped the journal shut between his hands. The damned thing was blank. He'd nicked a blank journal from the desk. What an idiot he would have looked standing there at the window pretending to read an empty book. No one else would have known, he thought, but that didn't help. Loki would have known. He would have stood right there as Sif stretched out her long, gloriously strong arms, staring at clean pages and trying to act as if they were the most engrossing thing he had ever seen in all his life.

He made to throw the journal across the room. Then, laughter at the door: Thor, rumbling like thunder. Sif's voice cut through it, but her words were indistinct. Loki stretched his finger out to the desk. Twitching the tip, he summoned a pencil from the top drawer.

The door opened. Sif and Thor spilled into the room. Loki looked up from the journal and said, "Oh. Hello. Having fun, are you?" He scribbled a bit on the page, just to show how little he cared that they had come through the door.

"Oh, yes," said Sif, half-breathless. Her chest worked. Red with cold, yet a bit of sweat shone at her throat. "More fun than you're having up here by yourself." She gulped and gestured. Her fingers fanned. The tips were rough, he knew, callused and polished.

"Writing," she finished.

Thor laughed and threw his arm about her shoulders. Sif stared at Loki, her eyes narrow, bright. She smiled at him. The sharpness of it made him want to put the pencil down. He turned back to the page.

"You mustn't tease him," Thor said to Sif. "My brother loves his journals far more than I will ever enjoy the battle."

"And if there's anything you enjoy, it's the battle," Sif retorted. "Get your arm off me. You smell like a horse."

"If anyone smells like a horse, it's you," said Thor, "Miss Mare."

"Loki, please," Sif beseeched him, "help me with your brother."

He allowed a small look. Thor had wound his arm tightly about her neck. For her protests, Sif looked fit to laugh.

"You seem to be doing well for yourself," Loki said. He drew a circle on the page then shot an arrow through it. "I'd rather you leave me out of your little lover's squabbles."

For this, Sif shoved Thor off her. He went easily and with a look of vast discomfort. Loki, smiling, drew another circle and another arrow. This one cut through both circles.

"Don't be disgusting," said Sif. "Do I look as if I would fall in with _Thor_?"

"Or I a horse?" asked Thor as earnestly.

This earned Thor an elbow in his gut. Thor grunted. That was another arrow, Loki thought. He awarded himself credit.

"It isn't your fault you look the way you do," Thor said, laughing even as he held his side. "Loki, tell me truly. Does she not look a horse?"

"And you're an oversized mutt," Sif snapped.

"Thor isn't a mutt," said Loki. "He's a purebred hound meant for the hunt."

"Thank you, brother," said Thor gravely, though the laugh ruined it.

"And you're a goat," Sif shot at Loki, "with that awful helmet of yours. Those two horns sticking up." She held her fingers to her brow and crooked them back.

Thor was beginning to look as if he'd forgot how to breathe. Wasn't that ever the way, though? Loki turned the arrow into a line which twisted about and ate itself. Even when he was the butt of a joke, Thor managed to come out the mouth. He made it so hard to dislike him.

"If you're done," said Loki, "I am trying to work."

"Ahhh," said Thor regretfully, "my apologies, brother. Here you were enjoying your solitude and Sif came breaking in to stir everything up."

Sif shoved Thor. "Go wash your face before I pull it off."

"Please, do," said Loki. "I can smell you over here."

"And what of Sif?" Thor shouted as she shouldered him toward the door. "Can you not smell her fine aroma as well?"

"The only fine aroma I can smell is your horse shit," said Sif.

"I would not be so crude as the lady," Loki demurred.

"I thought _you_ were the horse," Thor said to her.

Sif closed the door square in his face. She fell against it and heaved a breath, huge and hugely exaggerated. A length of hair had fallen across her throat. She swept it aside and pulled it up behind her ear.

"Honestly," she said. "I don't know how anyone stands him."

"He's Thor," said Loki. "Everyone loves him."

Sif glanced sharply at him, but Loki had turned to the journal again. He wrote his brother's name twice, once in the archaic tongue which the sorcerers used and again in the shorthand runes of everyday work. He scratched through the second but blacked the first out entirely. Best not to leave even so miniscule a bit of magic about.

"He's your brother," said Sif. "To you, he must be without estimation. To the rest of us, he's not so perfect."

She sat in a chair apart from Loki. Sif folded one leg up, her foot tucked beneath the other thigh. She stretched the other leg out before her. She'd taken her shoes off. He wondered that he'd missed it. How she would have bent to slip the first shoe free. Hair falling free, her collar folding. He was glad he'd missed it.

"I know of my brother's flaws," said Loki, perhaps a bit later than he ought have for Sif looked at him and her eyebrows were crooked. "I know of a few no one else does."

"He farts in his sleep," she guessed.

"That I do not know," Loki conceded. "But if you'd like, we can say so."

"No," she said, "I think I'd like not." She smiled.

He drew blindly, unthinking, and said, "Thor's gone to wash."

"Yes," said Sif, "I know. I was here."

"Did you not mean to wash?"

Another long line, added to the rest. He bent it in a curve, as for a chin.

"In a bit," Sif said. She sank low in her chair. The arms rose beside her. Her eyes lidded like a cat's and her smile turned slow and hot. "It's nice and toasty in here."

Her eyes flickered; she looked to him. Loki glanced at the page again. He'd drawn a horse's head in profile. Not very well, but there it was. He dashed the pencil through it, turning it into a scribbled storm cloud.

"Don't you get hot up here?" Sif asked. She ran her fingers through her hair, hand-combing it.

Loki's affinity for the cold was common knowledge in the palace. He turned to a fresh page in the journal and touched the pencil to his tongue. Sif's lashes dropped. He would not flatter himself to think she did so on his account.

"This room isn't so hot as the others," he allowed. "I've had them close two of the pipes by the window so as to let the cool air in."

"You'd think you were a jötunn the way you like the cold," said Sif.

"And you're a Múspellsmegir," Loki countered. "How you do carry on in summer."

"It's too chilly in winter," she said. "I hate how you lose feeling in your fingers and your toes. It makes me feel slow and stupid."

"Like Thor," he suggested.

She looked at him again. "Not that bad. No." She turned pensive then. A shadow slipped over her mouth. "My mother will be stoking the fire now."

Loki lowered the pencil. Sif looked quite stoically at the window over his shoulder. She had lived at the palace for some time now, since the last years of her adolescence.

"Do you miss her?"

She scoffed, but it was a bluff, he thought, a move to throw him off as she brought her shield to bear.

"How can I miss her? I see her every week. More, if I've time. It isn't as though we're strangers."

The words were on his tongue: like your father? He swallowed them. Sif had not spoken to her father in years, so much longer a time than she had lived at the palace. If Loki thought, at times, of his own father— But Odin loved him. He knew that. He knew, too, Sif could not say the same for her father. Loki's hands itched for their stillness. He wanted to stroke his fingers along her brow, through her hair.

Sif turned more fully to him. Her drawn-up leg bowed.

"I thought you were working."

He picked the pencil up again.

"I was," he said, "until you distracted me."

Her head fell back against the rest. "Oh," she said, the vowel rising from low in her throat, rounding in the corners of her mouth. "My deepest apologies, my liege. I would so hate to be a distraction."

He did not know why it should bother him then—the tone of her voice, how her lashes fell dark over her eyes—any more so than it did at any other time. She slithered in under his skin, drew it tight over his bones, the muscles, his too-hot veins.

"If you're quiet," he said. "You may stay."

"How gracious," Sif drawled.

Her eyes closed; he thought they did. She'd such thick lashes, darker at the outside corners. They made her more beautiful but fiercer, too, in a way he did not understand. He understood so little of Sif. He could not understand why that was so.

He had known her since they were children, all three of them: Thor and Loki and Sif. He knew her thoroughly. How she dressed (leathers embellished with buckles and cut counter to fashion). How she spoke and how she folded her arms when she thought. The sound of her footsteps on: stone, earth, grass, metal, wood. Weight: on her toes, on her heels, balanced between the two. What to say to make her: laugh (with him, at him), angry (with him, with another), hurt (because of him, because of another). How her throat worked. The line and form of her clavicle.

He _knew_ her.

 

Sif hooked her toes then unbent them. A joint cracked. The corner of her mouth curled. Would that he could draw that curl out, see it unwound, trace it down to where it began somewhere warm inside her mouth. Dangerous, he thought. So very dangerous.

Loki drew a simple line on the page. Her mouth, hot and dark. Corners folding. Little pinched shadows like secrets written on a scrap of paper, twisted and then burnt. How he wanted. He drew another line, like the swoop of her throat. Her unending throat with its hollows and its hard angles.

He had called her horse as a child for: her nose, the coltish turn of her legs, her hair which fell from its tie like a horse's tail. His tongue had run away from him. He had not meant to say it, but that was what he had said. He hadn't known what he meant to say, only that her nose was so very long and her hair so very bright and her thighs in their thickness glorious in a way he hadn't understood then.

"Pathetic," he muttered.

Sif hummed. She opened one eye. In the golden light of the room, her hazel eyes were more brown than green. He hadn't the tools to steal that color. Her eyebrow shaped a question.

"I was only talking to myself," he explained.

"Well," she said. Her eye closed. "So long as it wasn't anything serious."

"Deadly," he said lightly, so she would think it a joke.

Sif snorted. Horse, he thought with affection. He weighed his chances of saying it aloud. Would she shout? Would she snort again? Her lips pursing, the lower rounding. How she would roll her eyes at this, Loki's oldest joke.

He drew another line and another, building them up as he might a wall. It did not look very much like her, except perhaps for the slope of her throat, the strength thick through her shoulders. He never could solve her smile or the way her eyes lit up. He could sketch the shell but he could not give it life.

Sif stirred and stretched out the leg she'd bent. The muscles in her legs shifted beneath her trousers. How he longed to hide his kisses in the hollow of her knee that he might draw them out again. He supposed he should feel filthier than he did, sneaking furtive looks at Sif as she stretched her arms out and then her legs again.

The door opened. Thor, shining wetly, leaned in and said, "Can you smell me now?"

"Who could not?" asked Sif. She sat upright. Her face had turned to Thor.

Loki closed the journal.

"Brother!" said Thor, pleased. "And you are here still as well."

"I would not leave Sif without company," said Loki.

"And what exciting company," said Sif. Her mouth quirked slyly.

Loki ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth and found both exceedingly dry.

"Well, I'm always glad to see you two getting along," said Thor.

"We get along very well without you," said Sif. She smiled at Loki. The joke was for Thor.

"As if we were the dearest of friends," said Loki. "Which, of course, we are."

"Very dear," said Sif, for she would not concede defeat and never, never to Loki.

Loki smiled.




 

_v: loki dreaming._

Into the deeps, well below the palace proper, Loki descended. The frost came with him. He bore winter in his hands, its chills, its cruelties, its whimsies and its blades. He bore it, and he was heavy with it, and he did not care for he was tired and he was cold and it did not matter. 

The hall of relics opened to him. Frost spread like lace, like spiderwebs, across the whole of it. He stepped down into the hall, and where he stepped the ice thickened till it gleamed as if onyx beneath his boots. What had he come here to do? He knew it.

The destroyer waited for him. He smelled its fires, its smoke, the heat of its metal. In a moment it would wake. In a moment, he would waken it. And where would it go? What would it do? It would fulfill its purpose. It would do its duty, the thing which it had been made to do, the office it had been charged with upon creation.

Loki did not mean to speak, but out it came. He felt it slithering like a snake from his diaphragm, up his throat, down his tongue, spilling hotly from his lips:

"Kill Thor."

The wall parted. Light fell upon Loki, a terrible and unyielding light, a holy light which hid its fires in a metal shell. The destroyer woke. Its joints ground and sighed, and its eyes lit red and burning. Kill Thor, Loki thought. Kill Thor. Kill Thor.

"No," Loki said. He said this slowly. His tongue stumbled. "No. Stop. I command you to sleep. I command you to stay. Do not kill Thor."

"It's too late for that, boy."

Loki turned. His hands were empty, bare, and they were pale, like the skin of the son of Odin. He was pale. He turned on the throne room. In the Allfather's throne sat Laufey, draped in Odin's robes of office. Like a blow to the stomach Loki felt it, to stare up at that face, that dark face, indigo creased with shadowed lines; to see it stare back at him beneath his father's crown.

"How dare you," Loki said low and soft and dangerous, "how _dare_ you profane the Allfather's throne, you murderous, thieving—"

"Who is the thief?" asked Laufey. His voice rang out, not like Odin's which thundered, but like ice cracking, like bells swung in a dissonant pattern. "Who stole my son and turned him against me, who called him æsir and filled him with hate?"

"You are not my father," Loki said, baring his teeth, "and I am not your son. I would rather be flayed than be the son of one such as you."

"One such as me," said Laufey, mocking. "For I eat my young, do I not? As all the jötnar do. That is why we're so few." His eyes glittered, red stones. "Not like the reasoned, civilized æsir who simply steal their young and poison them. The fair, gentle æsir who would never kill the babes of even the vile frost giants."

Loki's mouth was sour, thick with hate, thick with spit and blood and ice. His face twisted. He felt it in his mouth, his brow, his nose.

" _You_ ," he said, and it was a curse. "You would sit on my father's throne, you would dress as him and slander him, as if you had any right to pollute Asgard with your—" His breath came short, hot. "Your putrescence," he said, "your _filth_."

"I have every right," said Laufey. He stood then and Odin's robes fell down to his feet, which were bare. His toes showed dark beneath the hem. At his back a tree of black ice unfurled its branches.

"I have every right," said Laufey again, "to speak ill of the monster who stole my son from me."

He could not breathe. He could not breathe. Loki burned in his clothes, as if set to flame.

"If there are any monsters in the house of Odin," he said, "they are you and I."

Laufey looked down upon Loki and in his aspect, his monstrous aspect, showed a fathomless sorrow. The branches of the tree rose like horns from his crown, from Odin's crown. Loki's father's crown.

"You were never a monster," said Laufey. "Only a child led astray."

Laufey's face changed, and what was there Loki could not see; he could not comprehend. The tree shone brighter still, as if the moon rested in its branches and its light consumed Laufey or the thing which wore his skin.

"You would have destroyed all Jötunheimr," said the thing which was Laufey. "Why?"

"Because they're monsters," Loki spat. "Because they do not deserve to live."

"All things deserve to live," it said to him, and it was gentle and it was cruel. He felt a touch on his face as of a leaf, turning. "Even Loki deserves to live."

His face was wet and hot with it. He wept, soundless, and pressed his hands to his eyes. His skin was cold, though he felt as if he burned. He turned his fingers in till his nails bit into his brow. The coldness of his flesh calmed; it soothed. He wanted to curl about it. He wanted to hide within it.

"Would you kill yourself?" asked the tree through Laufey. "Is your hate so great? You, who would have killed a world."

"Please," Loki whispered. "I only want to rest."

"You, who would have killed Thor," said the tree.

And the destroyer opened its face. Loki lifted his head and turned, and he turned onto the desert again, the sun swollen to fill the sky. Thor bare of shield, bare of hammer, bare of sword, walked out against the sun. The destroyer turned to Thor.

"No," said Loki, "you idiot— Go back!"

Thor raised his face to the destroyer and the destroyer brought its hand down upon him. Blood, red on the sand. Thor crumpled, falling first to his knees then to his hands. The destroyer struck him again. Sunlight glared off its shoulder, its arm, its thick fist.

"No," said Loki. "Stop it! I command you to stop!"

"The destroyer answers only to the king," said Odin.

Loki turned again. His father stood before him, mighty Odin with his scepter and his crown, limned with sunlight and with all the gold of his station.

"Father," Loki breathed. "Father, please. You have to stop it. Thor will die if you do not."

"Is that not what you wished?" asked Odin with such mildness. His eye was hard. Loki felt weighted with his father's judgment, slung over with stones. "Did you not want to see your brother stripped of his power and sent out from Asgard?"

"No," said Loki, "no, no, I didn't want to see Thor banished, I—"

"And yet you lied to him," said Odin. "As you lie to me now."

Thor shouted. Loki looked over his shoulder and he saw it again, all of it, Thor striding out cloaked in his foolish bravery, so sure and absolute, and the destroyer breaking him beneath its hand. Thor fell silent. Then he simply fell.

"I don't lie," Loki shouted. He rounded on Odin. "Father, you must stop this!"

"I cannot undo what you have done," Odin thundered. "I cannot stop what you have set into motion in your hate and your short-sightedness."

Loki fell to his knees before the throne.

"I did it for you," he said. "I did all of it for you. I did it to make you proud. Father—"

"I am not your father," said Odin.

"Father," said Loki again, for he did not know what else to say. His tongue betrayed him. Like a coward, it turned from him.

"You are not my son," said Odin.

How strange, the rage that filled Loki, for his mind was clear though it would devour him. Like leaping into a cold spring, he thought.

"Who was it who spoke to me of the evils of Jötunheimr?" Loki snarled. "Who was it who told me of their barbaric ways, their empty hearts, who spoke of Asgard's greatness, its purity and light? Who was it who did this and never thought it worth mentioning oh, by the way, Loki, you're a frost giant?"

"You will be silent," commanded Odin.

"No!" Loki shouted. "You will be silent! Thor was right to call you a fool, for that is what you are."

Odin swelled, and in his swelling he darkened the sun. The desert fell to shadow, and only the tree shone in the void Odin cast before him.

"You would dare challenge your father?" he bellowed.

Loki trembled. He could not stop trembling. He found, after a moment, he was shaking his head.

"No," he said. "You are not my father."

"Then who is your father?" asked Odin. "Are you truly Laufey's son?"

"No," said Loki again. "You saw to that. I saw to that."

The tree shone so brightly, silver as the moon, silver as the frost. Loki was cold but it did not hurt him to be so. He was empty, so empty, but for the little certainty in his breast which cleared his eyes and gave him the strength to lift his face to the Allfather standing at his throne.

"I have no father," he said to the ghost of Odin. "I am not Laufeyson but I am not Odinson either."

"Then what are you?" asked the tree, for it was the tree. It was ever the tree. "Jötunn, but not jötunn. Æsir, but not æsir."

He lowered his face.

"I don't know," he said.

A hand at his neck. He lifted his head again, and the tree bent before him as Frigg. Her hair glimmered not gold but silver, and in her eyes he saw his own face reflected back. He was blue, his eyes dark, and her hands did not burn on his skin. She smiled gently.

"I wish you were here," he said, and his voice broke to say it. "Mother."

"I am not your mother," said the tree.

"You are not," said Loki, "but Frigg is."

"She is one mother," the tree agreed.

He could not think of it. Somewhere in that emptiness which ate at him, something twisted tightly.

"Why do you do this?" He gestured to the throne room, the desert, the hall of relics wherever it lay between the two. "Why these tricks and games and, and nightmares?"

"Are they nightmares?" asked the tree. Frigg raised her eyebrow. "They are not tricks. You are the one who decides what goes on in these visions." The face turned strange. "I cannot dream."

"I didn't want this," he said. "I didn't want any of this. I didn't want Thor to be, to be cast out from Asgard. I didn't want to hurt him, or to, to hurt my friends—"

"You did hurt them," said the tree. "You did all those things. What does it matter if you wanted to do them? You made your choice."

"Would that I had killed myself," he said bitterly. "I was the monster. Always the monster."

"You are not a monster," said the tree, and she sounded so much like his mother he could not help but to look up to that face, that dear, familiar face which frowned as his mother would frown. "That is Odin speaking through you. Loki, don't you understand yet? There are no monsters. Only children who have lost their way."

"I am not a child," he said.

The tree smiled. "To me," she said, "you are all children."

He could not bear that smile, so ageless and so sad and so deeply, terrible incomprehensible. Loki turned away. His mother's foot showed beneath the hem of her skirt, and the toe of her shoe was beaded in the shape of an olive branch.

"I would have killed them," he said to that foot. "All of them. I would have killed all of Jötunheimr, and—and I would not have regretted it. I would have been glad to see it gone. To see all of them gone."

"Forty-three seeds lost," said the tree. "That is how many you slew."

He closed his eyes, his red eyes. He licked his lips, which had dried and cracked in the heat. Where his tongue touched them, frost whispered. The chill of his spit did not hurt, but eased the dryness, the sharp ache in his lips and his mouth.

"I am," he said, hitching, "so sorry."

"And you will always be sorry," said the tree in a distant sigh, a wind upsetting leaves, so unlike his mother's voice. "You will remember, and you will never forget what you have done or why you did it."

She touched his face, fingers light on his cheek. Loki turned his head to that touch and for a moment, it was as if his mother held him again. But it was not Frigg, no more than it had been Thor dying at the feet of the destroyer, or Odin, or Laufey.

"I wish I had not been born," Loki whispered, and he whispered it not to the tree, but to Frigg.

"But you were born," said the tree. "You live. I know that it hurts you to live."

"What do you know of hurting?" he demanded, suddenly furious, hating its touch, the nearness of it. He tore away from its outstretched hand. "What could you possibly know of my suffering?"

Light radiated in twisting spokes from Frigg's face. The world contracted to a single point, and in that point Loki was a grain of sand, a speck of dust, a spot of nothing for the vastness of Yggdrasill undying and dying.

"What could you possibly know of mine?" asked the tree.

The sharpness faded. Loki opened his eyes again. He had fallen prostrate before her feet. They filled his vision. Yggdrasill filled the world.

"I know," said the tree.

She stooped. He closed his eyes again, for he could not stand that light, the chiming of bells and the rustling as of leaves, now that he knew what touched his face with such light fingers.

"Loki," said Yggdrasill, "you are my child, as are all things my children. You are worthy of love. All my children are worthy of love. There exists no thing which does not deserve to be cherished."

"Who would love me?" he whispered to her feet.

 

He felt Yggdrasill's smile and did not like to think of how he knew she smiled. Everything which surrounded him was Yggdrasill. The world was Yggdrasill.

"Oh, Loki," said Yggdrasill. "Don't be obtuse. You aren't a child."

The tree left him. Its light left him. Its song left him.

In the dark which followed, Loki curled on the floor and thought of snow falling in thick flurries, of fathers and of sins, his sins, his father's sins. Laufey's sins. Odin's sins. He thought, too, of Sif: her rough hands, her hair, her lithe throat and the way it worked when she said, "Loki," in disgust or in amusement.

He thought of Sif.





	7. 6.

_i: memory: sif._

She slipped out of the crowded hall and into the night and came up short. A figure darkened the balcony. Loki turned to her. He'd a glass in one hand and the other hand supported his wrist. If he was at all surprised to see Sif out, he didn't show it. He inclined his head. His hair gleamed darkly in the glow of the party.

"What are you doing out here?" she asked. Absurd that her heart should pound so. It was only Loki in a black coat and trousers, high collar buttoned around his throat.

"Something about the starlight," he said, "and the fullness of the moon." His fingers worked along the glass. The bell was near full, mead untouched. "And I suppose I didn't want to watch my brother make a fool of himself again."

A roar of laughter rang out. Voices rose in shouting song, hands clapped, and a glass dropped, shattering upon the stones. She supposed Thor danced with Volstagg still upon the table. Loki's gaze flickered.

"He slew the wyrm Eingeirr," she said. "If he wishes to make a fool of himself, then it's his right to do so."

Loki's gaze flickered from her. He rolled the glass along his fingers. The mead flashed, gold as honey.

"And why are you out here, Lady Sif?"

She shrugged. Her shoulders were bare and the night air was cool upon them.

"I was over-hot."

"Then you are welcome to join me," he said, smiling.

He held his hand out, not to take hers but to encompass the balcony, the railing, the channels which drove on to the sea, and the stars above them. His fingers were terribly long. Her hand felt oddly empty at her side, so she folded her fingers to her palm.

She joined him at the railing. Vines laced the rail, wound between the small pillars that held it up. Loki turned with her, and as she folded her arms across the railing and looked down to the water, he watched her. Sif propped her chin upon her hand and looked back at him. His eyes were pale, but in such shadows they showed so very dark, like stones at the bottom of a deep well.

"I would have stayed even if you hadn't wanted me to," she told him, "though I thank you for your gracious allowance."

"Oh, I know," he said. "When have I ever stirred the brave Sif from her course?" He smiled sleekly at her. Perhaps he thought to mock, but Sif was not moved to think herself injured.

She'd two pints honey-gold mead and a half-glass of rich, unwatered wine in her. Her blood sang, warm and dreamy and sweet, and a soft and marvelous glow suffused all the world. The way the stars glimmered, reflected in the water, made her feel fierce and terrible. That was why when she looked at Loki in his black coat she wanted to see the collar opened, his long, pale throat exposed.

"Dance with me," she said.

The smile remained, but his face stilled.

"I'd rather spare the whole of Asgard the sight of me dancing on top of a table," he said lightly. He leaned to her, as though in confidence. "If you'd like, Thor would be more than happy to carry you through the pheasant."

"I'm not asking Thor to dance," Sif said. "I'm asking you."

Loki drew back. In a moment he would invent a fantastical excuse and leave her there on the balcony as he vanished into the hall, running as a coward would from a challenge. His heel scuffed the stones. His eyes lidded, then his lashes rose. He took breath. The lie flittered up his throat.

She caught his wrist. His sleeve creased. For the span of half a heartbeat, he looked startled. Sif took the glass from his fingers. The mead sloshed, rolling up the sides in shining waves. She set the glass down upon the railing. It clinked lightly.

"And I'm not going to dance with you on a table," she added, as he remained unconvinced.

An eyelash quivered. The soft corner of his mouth did not. He could go so still when he wanted, so watchful.

"How very tempting," he said, "but I'm afraid I must decline."

She turned her hand on his wrist so her fingers fit between his thumb and the side of his hand. Loki did not move. Sif pulled at his hand until, as though he had forgotten how to walk, he stepped forward once then twice, each step a sacrifice. He was taller than her but not by much. Less than a half foot. She needed only raise her eyes to catch him.

"You're not afraid, are you?" she asked him lightly.

His eyes, already dark, darkened. Loki smiled as she'd known he would, sly and tight, his eyes narrowing. It was a polite smile, the sort of slick, mocking look he put on for crowds. She wanted to peel it off his face, just slip her nail under the corner and pull it away so whatever it was he did underneath would be bared.

Sif tipped her head. "Well? Are you?"

"I was only wondering if you could keep up," he said.

His fingers ghosted over her hip, down the curve then up again to rest at her waist. Sif stepped into the box his lean shoulders made. Her chest brushed his. The mead made her dizzy, airy, wild with starlight and the heat running in her blood. The high collar cut off just below his jaw. If she stuck her finger beneath it, would she feel him swallow?

"You should worry more for yourself," she said.

Loki moved against her then. His coat parted at the waist, a shadow splitting, then his knee slipped between her thighs. Sif turned her hips in accordance with the steps and swung about him. His fingers slid across the small of her back, then he released her. Her skin tightened in the absence. Within the hall, the singing thundered, so loud as to drown out the music. Hidden in the leaves of the flowering vine which ornamented the balcony's rail, a family of insects buzzed their wings. Her heart beat and beat.

Setting her hand on his unbending shoulder Sif took three steps, in and out and in again, then turning on her heel she repeated each. Loki stood, motionless, a ghost, a shadow, a dark tree about which she wove. Each step she made, she made deliberately, as if it were an ambush she set instead of the next turn. On the sixth step she rolled on her toes; she turned her back to him. A moment. Then his hand slid around her back to lay flat across her belly. The step called only for a hand at the hip.

Got you, she thought.

He turned his head; his lips brushed her cheek and his exhalation tickled her skin. A shiver prickled her spine.

"Your concern touches me," he murmured.

She stepped over his foot and turned; now his arm bracketed her, a bar beneath her breasts. A length of hair fell across her cheek. She smiled and knew he'd see it for what it was: a baring of the teeth. He stepped back, and now he turned about her, three steps away and three returning. He looked at her, his green eyes refracting light from the hall. What did he think? If she could cut it out of him, she would, but she had only her hands.

He gave her his back. Sif dragged her fingers across his shoulders. Was that a tremor in the left blade? She felt it in her thumb. An insect, its wings jeweled, darted between them. The hum of its wings lingered. The music had faded some, gentling as the set wound down and the dancers brought gifts of beer to those performing. She finished the circuit and came round to his front again. Her hand slid down his arm.

  
Sif looked up through her eyelashes. If they were thicker, she supposed the effect would be more severe. Loki inclined his head to say: go on.

"We can stop now," she said, "if you still want to cut. The music's almost done."

"Oh, really," he said. He leaned into her and ducked his head, just so. Breath at her ear again, his lips a phantom on her skin. "I wouldn't have thought you would be the one to suggest we stop before we've seen it through."

His hand was strong beneath her own. She felt his other hand at her waist again, thumb at her hipbone, fingers dangerously low on her back. Sif dug her fingers into the back of his shoulder. A little muscle in his cheek fluttered. She felt it at her ear. She turned so her cheek pressed to his, her mouth at his own ear. His dark curls shivered as she breathed out.

"I was only thinking of you," she said.

"How very," he said with a little pause, " _very_ considerate of you."

Then he moved again. His fingers fanned out across the small of her back, bracing. Embracing, she thought. It was the drink that made her burn under his hands. The drink was why she would have slipped her arms about his long throat, so hidden, and pressed against him, as much of him as that half foot difference would allow her. She kept her hands where they were, the one at his shoulder, the other clasped in his hand, his long hand with its long fingers. His eyes were black, draped in shadows. The light shone at his back.

Time, she thought. How much left before someone else came? A pair of lovers seeking a place to be secret with each other. As if he knew what she thought, and perhaps he did, clever Loki—she thought that with some vicious amusement—Loki guided her away from the opened doors and toward the edge, where the vines twined about the railing and the water murmured.

Sif allowed him to press her to the railing. The stone bit into her back. His shoulders rolled, dipping as he bent to her. She leaned into it. The air was light on her throat, her face, her exposed collarbone. She had come outside to cool, but she had only got hot again. Loki loomed over her. A spray of his hair, black and so carefully coiffed, had come loose against his brow. Her stomach knotted. A thought crystallized: in a moment she would bring her leg up to his waist. She felt it in the tension of her thighs. She wondered if he felt it, too.

His eyes flickered. He looked away. A curl fell against his ear.

Sif rose. She went on the attack: she pushed into him; she forced his arm back; she gave him no quarter and no choice but to retreat. Loki glided smoothly as she led him, his hand cool, his fingers loose and wandering over the back of her hand. Sif drove him on. The steps changed. The formal dance gave way to something closer to a spar, something hard and something brutal. He drew back before her but he did not break away; he did not surrender; he did not _give_. If he smiled, she would strike him.

The hand at her waist lifted. He touched her hair, which fell in a dark cloud past her bare shoulders. His thumb grazed the corner of her jaw. His lips parted, there at the center; at the corners they stuck together still. A flash of teeth, then of tongue.

"You've worn your hair down," he said.

"So have you," she said.

He'd slicked his hair back, but the curls at his throat remained, as they always remained. He had worn his hair like so for years, centuries, since they were children. Thor said it was so people would respect him, but Sif had thought, once, it was so he would look more like Odin, whose hair never curled.

What was it, then, that made her want to wind her fingers in his hair? His hand as it stroked down her back was so very heavy. She felt suddenly that her feet were filled with lead, her mouth with sand. She swallowed but the dryness clung to her tongue. The drink. That was it.

They had stopped dancing. She held his hand, his shoulder. His fingers on her back wafted up then slowly down. A shadow hid his eyes from her. His nose showed, a pale line, his mouth so thin and sweet beneath. Her fingers tightened about his arm. She wanted very badly to press her hand to his jaw and turn his head to her.

"Ha! Sif!"

She jumped and turned. Thor shone, bright as fire, as he filled the door. Loki melted away from her, his hands upon her and then gone. A certain coolness remained, an impression low on her back and on the backs of her fingers.

"So this is where you've run off to," said Thor, grinning. Then his eyes fell on Loki. He laughed in delight. "Brother! You as well! I'd wondered where you hid. Come! Come. You shouldn't sulk when we've such a fine party."

He came forward and took Sif by her shoulder and Loki by his. Loki was stiff a moment then he eased, and he said to Thor, "I was hoping to avoid your notice another hour."

"You stare too much at the stars," said Thor. "You were not bothering Sif, were you?"

Loki's eyes passed over her. She did not meet his gaze. Her head hurt her, too muddled with wine and mead and whatever it was his hands had done to her. The thought of his breath, hot on her jaw: she could not bear it.

"No," she said. "He wasn't bothering me at all."




 

 _ii: queen, mother._

A harried-looking courier directed Sif to the queen. The courier bore a length of carpet rolled up and tied in a tube on her shoulder. Sif walked carefully that it wouldn't smack her in the face.

"Packages all day," said the courier grimly. "Always packages. When I close my eyes I see packages. Think she's gone Loki. You know, all mad-like."

Sif stopped sharply. The courier went on another five steps before she noticed Sif hadn't followed. She turned halfway round. The tube of carpet dipped alarmingly at her back.

"You all right?" asked the courier.

"The queen is _your_ queen," said Sif, "and you would do well to remember it."

"What? Oh," said the courier. She reddened. "I was only making a joke. You know, ha ha ha. Good one there."

Sif brushed past her. She bumped the carpet with her shoulder, and if it almost fell from the courier's shoulders, knocked near-loose, then good. _Petty_ , she heard, _I would have expected something like that from Thor_ , but that was only Sif. She forced her hands out flat against her thighs. "Gone Loki." What right had she to say such a thing?

The courier scurried after her. "Er. Lady. Lady. Lady, if you please!"

Sif rounded on her. She scowled down her nose at the courier, who went wide-eyed and shrank back.

"Lady _Sif_ ," she said, "if you have to call me lady."

The courier reddened again. She held her ground admirably, though, for all she'd made herself as small and mouse-like as possible.

"Er," she said. "Um. Ah."

Sif rolled her eyes. "What is it?"

The courier fumbled with the carpet. Thrusting it high on her shoulder, she swung her arm out and pointed at a pair of doors back a ways down the hall.

"Her majesty's this way," she said weakly. "Is what I meant. To say. Er. After you."

Sif stalked on. The courier ran, huffing, after her. Perhaps Sif would have offered to carry the carpet for her, but the courier had made that _joke_. He wasn't mad, she wanted to say. She wanted to shout it. He wasn't mad; he was only— She didn't know.

They passed through a small corridor, softly lit and hardly peopled. Sif's steps rang out like strokes of a hammer, and the courier's were bits of cloth rubbed across a squeaking wheel. The light on Sif's face was gold like the sun but without heat. She thought of all the things she didn't know and all the things she didn't understand, and underneath all of it was: something.

The courier said, "Er."

She'd caught up to Sif. Her head came to Sif's shoulder. The carpet, rolled, rose higher. She was very mouse-like.

"Uh," said the courier.

"If you've something to say," Sif said, leading.

"Lady Sif!" The courier peered up at her. The carpet, jostled, knocked the side of her head. At least the courier had the grace to walk with the carpet away from Sif. "Um. I just wanted to know. Are you _the_ Lady Sif?"

"I know no others," she conceded.

"Oh-h," said the courier. "Oh, oh. Oh."

"Yes," said Sif, "I quite agree."

"Who slew the eight wraiths of the sunburnt lands!"

Sif eyed her. The courier nearly glowed. Oh, indeed. She was an _admirer_. Sif turned from the courier. The corridor went on another four lengths. The courier showed no signs of stopping. Discreetly, Sif pulled her coat straight.

"Oh, please," she drawled. "There were only six. Hardly the greatest feat of song and legend."

"And!" said the courier. "Who took on the fearsome wizard Anviðr and trounced him!"

"Thoroughly," said Sif.

The courier had got into it now.

"Who slew the wild boars of Night Keep, each of them bigger than two men put together."

"Bigger than that," said Sif.

"Whose bravery in combat is unmatched, and who has no equal with the sword!"

"True," Sif admitted.

"Who cut the head of the wyrm Eingeirr from its shoulders!"

"Oh," said Sif. "That one was Thor."

"It should've been you," said the courier earnestly. Then she hefted the carpet high again and pointed. "This way, my lady. Lady Sif. I mean."

Sif held the door open for her. The courier flushed and smiled hugely and bending at her knees, she nearly toppled. Sif lunged for the carpet and caught it.

"Oh—" The courier staggered upright. "Please, it's mine to carry—"

"I only straightened it," said Sif.

She followed the courier up this next corridor. She knew it, Sif thought. The reliefs on the walls were familiar, if distantly so, then she remembered: Loki running before her, his black curls bobbing as he turned and shouted, "You'll never catch me." They had been children, young children. She hadn't caught him. Her chest hurt suddenly.

Sif cleared her throat. To the courier she said, "Not that I'm not flattered, but—"

"How do I know so much?" the courier finished for her. She winced. "Sorry. Bad habit. Didn't mean to. Um. I'm from the mountains. Whole family's from the mountains, but my uncle. He served in the guard till he lost his leg. He told stories."

"Only the good ones, I hope," said Sif.

"Oh, the best," said the courier. She stared steadfastly ahead. Her ears were all but purple. "I came down to the palace because, um. I wanted. You know, to be a warrior. Like you. Here we are," she said quickly.

Sif paused outside the doors. The courier wouldn't look her in the face.

"Why didn't you?" asked Sif.

The courier shrugged, but it was a tight shrug, a shamed shrug. The sort of shrug Sif had given her father when she was young and he'd asked her why she insisted on coming home covered in dirt and bruises.

"I'm small," said the courier. "Not very strong. I tell too many jokes."

Sif considered her. She _was_ small, but then so was Sif beside Thor the mighty, Thor the massive, Thor the half a mountain.

"How many of those have you carried today?" Sif asked. She thumped the carpet. A cloud of dust puffed out from the end.

"Lots," gasped the courier. "At least twelve."

"All from downstairs," Sif guessed.

The courier nodded.

"You don't seem weak to me," said Sif decisively. "Physical strength isn't everything. I've won more battles by being smarter than someone bigger than me. If you want to do it, do it. Don't hesitate."

The courier bit her lip. She glanced up at Sif and said, "It's hard, though."

"It's always hard," said Sif. She thought of her father, her mother. "But if it's what you want, what you really want. It's worth it."

She swallowed the "usually" at the courier's smile, which lit like a lamp at the heart of a darkened square.

"Thank you," said the courier. She bent at her knees again. The carpet began to slip. "Thank you. Thank you, my lady."

"Just Sif," said Sif. She caught the carpet and hoisted it. "I'll take this in for you."

"Oh," said the courier, "no, I couldn't possibly. I can't. Please. My lady—"

"Yes," said Sif as this threatened to continue, "you can. I've already done it."

"Thank you," said the courier again, helpless, "oh, thank you. Thank you."

As she opened the door, Sif paused. She looked to the courier, bright-eyed, smiling, face red as anything.

"What's your name?" Sif asked on a whim.

"Oh," said the courier. "Grid. For 'peace.'" She made a face.

"Farewell," said Sif.

Grid bowed low to her, and Sif opened the door.

The queen bent over a long table strewn with lengths of cloth in varying colors and patterns. She'd a bit of chalk poised between the first finger and the middle finger of her right hand and another bit of chalk in her mouth. A third piece hung from a string tied about her neck.

"Delivery," Sif called.

At this, Frigg looked up. Her eyes crinkled. She took the chalk from her mouth.

"Sif." She said her name as if it were a pleasure just to know it. "What a lovely surprise. You can put the carpet down wherever you like." She paused. Apologetically, the queen said, "So long as it's over there."

Sif laughed and set the roll of carpet down beside the rest of the rolls, in the corner by the door. The queen had drawn open the drapes, that the sun might light the room rather than the torches now dimmed along the walls. Shaking her hair back, Sif straightened and looked about. The room was dusty and but for what the queen had brought into it, great rolls of cloth and carpets and tubes of paper, it was bare. No one had used this room in years.

"What is all this?" Sif asked.

The queen drew a jagged line down a length of cloth then abandoned it. She pulled another roll of cloth to her. This one was blue, shot through with lines of silver.

"I needed something to keep busy," she said. "A new project. And there's so many rooms we never use. They stay empty for years and years, while we complain of how little room we have."

Frigg sketched white lines on the blue cloth, shaping the cloth with the chalk. Once she'd settled on a form, and if she were pleased with the cloth she'd chosen, she would cut it free of the cloth and give it life. Sif watched her as she worked, her hands steady. The thing she'd come to ask weighed in her chest. Now that she'd come, she knew it to be cruel; then she thought of Loki.

"And why have you come?" Frigg asked at last. She looked shrewdly at Sif over the roll. "You were never one for what some would call the feminine arts."

"You're very insightful," said Sif. She smiled. "I haven't your skill at it."

"Oh, but I've many years of practice." Frigg tapped the chalk against the chalk. The shape had escaped her. Absently she said, "I think, even if you'd as many years of practice, you would still chafe to work at it. We each of us have our own talents and our own desires." Then she smiled at Sif. "Whatever the men may say."

"They say a great deal," Sif said. "Some of them, anyway, and little of it worthy of consideration."

"They said the same things when I was young," said Frigg. "But there are fewer of them now."

She bent again to the cloth. The queen's fingers were white with chalkdust. She'd a smear at her chin as well. The sunlight sparkled in her hair; it threw off flashes of light like a pan filled with nuggets of gold. In the same light Loki's hair would have gleamed sleekly, black as a well-groomed raven's wing. Frigg had called him her raven when they were young, before Loki had grown old enough to think himself above such endearments. That was before Sif had called him goat.

"I came with a question for you," said Sif.

"Then I have an answer for you," said the queen. She drew another line down the cloth.

"When the Allfather returned from Jötunheimr," said Sif, "at the end of the last war. He brought home a child. A baby. Is this true?"

The queen stilled. Her fingers trembled. She set the chalk down. She drew breath then let it out, and she looked up to Sif. Sif had never seen the queen look so, for Sif had never seen the queen struck. Her mouth worked.

"How could you know?" she asked.

"Loki told me," said Sif. The words were overly loud in her ears. It was true, then. He was a jötunn. And now you know the why of it all, she thought. The thought cut.

The queen stared at Sif, searching. "How? When did you speak with him, that he would have told you?"

"In a dream," said Sif. Spoken, it was absurd. The queen's brow knitted. "I know how it sounds, but it is him. He lives, somewhere. I don't think even he knows where."

"Alive," said the queen. She was still, so very still. As a child, Sif had thought her so terribly beautiful, so regal and so elegant. Even as she said, "Loki lives," her grief a question, she was a pillar of grace.

Sif came round to her. She gave her hand to Frigg, and Frigg took it and held it tightly, so tightly the bones in Sif's fingers ground. Frigg looked wildly at her.

"Are you certain?" she asked urgently. "Are you certain my son lives?"

"He must," Sif told her. "When I see him, in—" Her tongue stuck.

"In your dreams," said the queen. "Oh, Sif. Oh, dear Sif, I am so sorry." She reached for Sif and cupped her cheek in her long, slender hand. "I knew, and I said nothing. I didn't want to arrange your lives."

Sif could not think of it. She would not think of it. She forced it away, viciously.

"When I see him," she said again, "when I speak with him, he answers as Loki would answer. He talks to me. He talks _with_ me. He's as infuriating as he's ever been, and he showed himself to me. As he truly is."

The queen closed her eyes. The shadow of the jötunn slept between them.

"Why did you not tell him?" Sif asked.

"He was my son," Frigg whispered. She opened her eyes again, and the sadness there made Sif feel the monster, the brute. The queen lowered her eyes. "I wanted to tell him, when he was a child. I saw how he looked at Odin and at his brother. He knew he was different."

Loki of the black hair. Loki, thin and pale, who melted in the summer. "There's one in every family," Sif's father had said once. He had meant it for Sif.

"But you didn't," said Sif. She clutched the queen's hand. She leaned into her. "Why did you keep it from him?" From us, she wanted to say, but it had never been her truth to know.

"The Allfather said we should not," said Frigg, remote. Then her mouth creased. "And I was afraid to lose him. He was my son."

"He is still your son," said Sif. "Wherever he is now, he is still Frigg's son."

Frigg turned to her. Even now, like so, the queen was beautiful, like a ray of sunlight bound in flesh, like a beloved aunt, like a shadow of her own mother. It was the Allfather's wisdom which Asgard followed, but even as a child Sif had thought Frigg wiser. She had wanted so badly to be like the queen, to be graceful and kind and slyly clever. But she was only Sif, and she thought, perhaps, that was enough.

"How will we ever find him?" asked the queen. "And if he is found, will he return to us?"

"I will find him," said Sif.

The queen held her hand tighter still.

"But will he return?" she asked.

Sif lowered her eyes.

"I cannot say," she said.




 

 _iii: sif dreaming._

Sif came to a tree, a great tree, a vast tree: ash, its branches spread wide, its fingers heavy with leaves and the simple winged fruit which bore its seed. She had a purpose, and she knew it, and she carried it with her as she would a blade. The roots rose like hills about her, and in their shadow she came to stand at the base of the trunk. Sif tipped her head back.

The branches turned up in the shape of a bowl, to catch the moon shining directly above. The moon shone so hugely it was as if it would fit into the tree after all. No simple way to ascend the trunk presented itself. Footholds, here and there. Knots like boulders protruding from the bark. She could use those to scale the side. If she'd a weapon she would have slung it across her back, but she'd nothing but her conviction and her hands.

Sif climbed. The bark was rough on her hands. The trunk twisted strangely, bulging here and receding there. It was an old tree, and it had grown into and out of itself in stages. Laden with foliage, green leaves glimmering silver, heavy with its age, nevertheless it remained unbowed. The trunk stretched on and on before her. Sif dug her toes into the underside of a knot and pushed up over the rest of it.

As she neared the top, where the branches grew in earnest and joined together, a rustling ran through the leaves. No wind played at her hair. The branches had tightened about each other. Sif snorted. She hitched her leg over a jutting canker.

"It won't do you any good," she called.

She waited. No one called back to her. Hiding, she thought. That was like him. She stuck her hands between two branches and, pointing her fingers sideways, she leveraged them apart. It was slow going at first; the branches refused to part. The leaves shuddered again. The bark seemed to shiver, too, turning under her feet. Sif planted her feet and pulled at the branches. Her back tautened. The muscles through her shoulders hardened. She wasn't Thor, the mountain made man, but she was Sif, and she would not be turned from her course by a silly tree that grew up in the wrong way.

"This is my dream," she said to it. "One way or another, I _will_ break your branches off."

The tree said nothing. Which was natural, of course; it was a tree.

"Loki," she shouted. "Call off your tree. If you don't, I'll pull its limbs off one by one." She thought a moment then added, "And when I do find you, you'll be sorry you didn't listen to me."

Loki said nothing either, which was also natural. Always with his games. She grit her teeth, drove her arms in up to her elbows, hooked her arms about the two branches, and pushed. Muscles strained. Her head began to ache.

Then the wood creaked. Leaves showered down upon her as if spooked. Samara fruits winged past her like startled birds. The tree groaned, and at last the branches parted.

Sif rested her head in the exposed juncture between the branches, only for a moment that she might breathe. Her back twinged horrifically. A rib on her left side throbbed; she'd pulled an accompanying muscle. Tightening her arms about the branches, she swung up onto the right. She had thought perhaps she would have to force her way through another series of tightly packed branches, layers and layers put in place to shield Loki, but there was nothing else.

At the bottom of the bell, in a hollow scooped out of the trunk, Loki sat in a throne carved out of black ice. He watched her as she stood from the branch. His face was pale, silver beneath the moon. His eyes shone green. At his ears, his hair curled thickly.

Sif slung her legs over and dropped like a stone, like a bird with its wings folded, like a cat. She landed on her toes in a crouch. Still, Loki watched. His fingers were white, the bones near his skin, pressed up as he held on to the arms of the throne. A look, a hunted look, a longing look, consumed his face, drew it tight.

She stood again. He lifted his head. Ten steps separated them, fewer than she'd expected. Distances worked strangely here. At her back, the branches made low mutterings and closed again. They sealed up, locking Sif and Loki in this globe, but light showered down upon them. A half moon, imprisoned in the spot where the branches knotted overhead.

"Not much of a challenge," she said. "I expected better of you."

"It isn't my design," he said. "I'm as much a pawn in this as you."

She took one step and then another. Her feet were bare. At least this time she was mostly dressed. In her belly, a hot thing squirmed.

"That's very unlike you," she said, "to let someone else tell you what to do."

He grimaced, perhaps, the ghost of a pout pulling at his lip. Ever the sore loser, Loki.

"I've found I have very little say," he said.

The bark of the trunk had scraped and clawed at her feet. Here in the hollow, it was as down or water, a malleable softness that gave under her toes and propelled her on. Three steps vanished.

"And yet you still go on nattering," said Sif. She narrowed her eyes. "You never did know when to stop talking."

Loki made a little noise in his mouth, tongue on his teeth.

"At least one of us has a basic grasp of civilized conversation. It isn't your fault," he said with honeyed kindness. "Too much time with Thor and anyone would forget how to string four words together."

"Don't," said Sif.

He blinked at her, one delicate decline and then rise of his lashes. He'd entirely too many of them. When he'd leaned into her, his hand so very cold on her cheek, she had counted nine in the one corner. It was more than she'd ever allowed herself to count. He was very blank now, smooth as silk. His shoulder twitched. He leaned forward very slightly.

"Touched a nerve, did I?"

"You haven't seen how he mourns you," she said.

Loki sank back. Disinterested, he said, "He mourns a lie." That was the lie.

"He mourns his brother," said Sif.

"I am no brother of Thor's," said Loki, but he faltered. It stumbled in his mouth.

Two steps more. He shrank back as she neared. The throne had been cut in a sharp design, all jagged edges rising asymmetrically angled to the left. Now it enveloped him; it cast shadows as arms to embrace him, to hide him from Sif.

"Lie if you wish," said Sif, "but I know the truth of it. And the truth of it is that you love Thor."

Loki stared unblinkingly at her, and in the shadows he was no longer pale, white under the moon, but blue and cold and—and Loki, she thought.

"Why have you come?" he asked. "Why will you not allow me this one measure of solace?"

"Why do you call me?" she countered. "Why do you tease me and tell me to find you and then shout at me for chasing?"

At another time or in another place, he would have looked furtively about; he would have feigned innocence. Now he leaned forward out of the shadows of his iced throne and stared at her with his terrible red eyes and said, " _Why won't you leave me_." But his eyes weren't terrible. It wasn't a terrible thing for him to look at her like so, his skin a velvet blue, his eyes bloodshot all through and his black hair a mess.

"Because you're as helpless as Thor," she said.

"Shut up about Thor," he said. "I want you to tell me why it is you've come here."

"Because someone has to keep you from doing something stupid," she said. That wasn't right, but she couldn't stop. "Because if I don't, you'll regret it."

"I don't need a nursemaid," Loki said cuttingly. "Tell me why you're here."

"I don't want to be your nursemaid," Sif said as sharply. "If you need someone to wipe your face, you have two hands."

His eyes lidded dangerously. "You're avoiding the question."

Sif took another step, and now she stood between his splayed knees. She leaned into him and set her hands to either side of his head on the back of the throne. Loki turned his face up to her.

"So are you," she said.

He breathed heavily. If Thor raged, Loki had flashpoints. She saw it coming in his eyes, the spark lighting in the red. Don't say something you'll regret, she thought. She didn't know if she meant it for Loki or for herself. That hot calmness had come over her. She welcomed it, almost.

Low, Sif said, "So tell me. Why is it you call for me then push me away? Tell me the _truth_."

Her breath stirred his hair. He looked at her as if across a great distance.

"You were always meant for Thor," said Loki.

"People aren't _meant_ for other people," Sif snarled. "I choose what I want. I choose who I want."

Sneering, he said, "If only we could all be so lucky as you," but his fangs fell short.

In her calmness, her careful, burning serenity, Sif said, "Choose." She said, "Now," for she was tired of it. She was tired of games. She was tired of how Loki stared at her and then looked away. She was tired of dreams and memories and wanting.

His fingers twitched on the left arm. He looked up to her and he was hunted, he was hungry, he was guarded Loki who ran from her, who said stupid things and made her want to shake him and kiss him and make him be still.

What he chose to say was, "I love you."

He said it as if he remarked on the weather. The words dropped like stones into water.

"Not since the first time I laid eyes on you," he said, "but after that. I think when you first threw me into a bush. That was when."

Like a tattoo cut into her heart. All that time. She remembered looking up the steps at the two princes, Thor bright as sunlight, Loki pale as moonlight, and thinking how thick the second prince's curls, how delicate his face.

"Why," she said, and it was small, fragile. She hated how it sounded, so wondering, so weak. More strongly she went on: "Why did you never tell me?"

His mouth twisted, mocking. He mocked himself. He smiled, and Thor was a shadow between them.

"Why do you think?"

"You were afraid," she said. "You were a coward."

The corner of his mouth flattened. The shields came up again; his eyes darkened. He leaned away from her. His head tipped back. If he mocked, he mocked Sif. And who's the coward? his leer wondered. Sif had never been one to turn her back to a challenge.

"So tell me," he said, "if we're being so honest with one another. While we're baring our souls. Why _are_ you here? Come to drag me home to face justice?"

What was it she wanted? She'd known for a very long time, though she'd refused to think of it. In the queer moonlight Loki showed blue, dark and cool as a shadow, the jötunn sitting before her and waiting for her to strike, to push him away.

"No," she said.

His face was turned up to her, and he was Loki, only Loki. Always Loki. He waited. She felt his breath on the underside of her chin, like the first frost. He was Loki. The hot thing inside her split apart.

"No," she said again. "I've come for you."

His lips parted. In the moment before she knotted her hands in his collar, that ridiculous high collar which closed him off from her and made her fingers itch down to the bone, his eyelashes flickered; he half-rose from the throne. His hands lifted.

Sif grabbed his collar, shoved him down again, and kissed him crushingly on his blaspheming mouth. Her lips burned; they froze against his skin. He exhaled. His breath bit at her lips. Then he wound his fingers in her hair and he turned his head to the side and back, and his mouth opened beneath her mouth, and what she asked of him he gave.

They parted. Sif licked her lower lip and tasted blood.

"Little cold," she breathed.

"Well, that won't do," said Loki.

He kissed her, and his lips were warm, his mouth hot. Her skin tingled, that rush which came from a healing spell burning through her. She chased after his tongue. His fingers flexed and flexed in her hair, and he slid his left hand down to set it at the small of her back.

"I swear," she said, "I'm going to break you in half for being so stupid."

"I deserve it," he said immediately. "I should never have been such a prat. Kiss me again, please."

She did so, but only because she'd figured out how to pop the hooks that held his collar closed about his throat. How long had she wanted to pull it apart like that? Longer than she ever would have admitted to herself. In the idle, shamed fantasies she had entertained and denied as a girl, he had been pale; he had fallen apart in her arms. Now he rose against her; he pulled at her hair and bit at her invading tongue; he was dark and cool and Loki, Loki, Loki. Always Loki. The years spilled out, wasted and innumerable. She could have choked him for them. She supposed to be fair she would have to choke herself, too.

"I want to kiss your throat," Loki whispered between kisses, long kisses, cold kisses for Sif and hot for Loki. His breath came up against her teeth. "I want to lick all your fingers and your toes. I want to bite your ears and your nose and your breasts and your tongue. The insides of your knees."

Her skin ran over with goosebumps, then tightened. A muscle in the back of her right knee trembled. She wanted to pick him up out of the throne and throw him to the ground and— But his mouth was so cool, his teeth so many, his hand sliding low across her arse so long and so tight about the curve. She licked at the ridged roof of his mouth and felt him shiver against her.

Wildly, he moaned, "I want to slip under your armor."

She laughed into his mouth. "Not while I'm in it."

His nails scraped over her scalp. He fisted his hand in her hair and dragged at it.

"Then why bother?"

Sif left off his mouth and bent to his throat. Loki made a little heartbroken noise, a breath strangled in his throat and swallowed. He arched. His fingers bit into the back of her thigh. He spoke madly into her hair, into the air, the moonlight: "I love you, I adore you," and "Your _hair_ ," and "Sif—"

The way he said her name, as if it were sacred. He so rarely called her "Sif." He had always spoken to her directly. Always.

Sif drew back. Loki followed, his fingers sliding from her hair to cradle her jaw. Her hair shone, caught in his palm. The moon glimmered above them. The tree was still, the throne cold. His lips were flecked as if with ash. In the distance, she smelled smoke.

"Loki," she said.

She touched his cheek, that high ridge of bone, the corner of his eye. His skin was cold but it did not burn her. He stared up at her. No one had ever stared at her like that. Her heart twisted. Clothed, he was bared. Dressed, he was naked. How long until he hid once more?

"Loki," she said again. She buried her fingers in his curls. He leaned into her palm, her wrist. "Please. Tell me where to find you."

He stilled. She felt his breath on her wrist. Then he straightened. Her hand fell away. He began to close.

She snatched his collar up and drew him to her. "No," she snapped, "you aren't running."

"I'm not going back," he said. "I won't. Not to Asgard. Not to Odin."

"Fine," she said. "Then don't. I won't force you where you won't go. But you must tell me where you are."

His eyes shadowed. His mouth was swollen, bruised and burnt with her kisses. She stroked his throat where she'd kissed his pulse, which hammered away beneath the skin no matter how he sought distance.

"You must believe me," she said. The words caught, too thick to slip through her throat. "Loki. You have to trust me. Tell me. Where? How do I find you?"

He closed his eyes. He was in her hands, she held him, she'd caught him, and yet still he slipped from her. No. She would not let him go. Sif tightened her hands in his coat. She drew a deep breath.

Then: Loki opened his eyes. What did he see? In his red eyes she saw only her reflection, warped. His expression was remote, his eyes unfocused. Then he looked at her.

"Yggdrasill," he said. Only that.

Loki covered the hand on his throat, and his fingers shone brightly with a green light. In her head Sif saw: a tree, a tree, a tree greater than any she'd ever known, and in its trunk, a door which opened. He pressed his lips to her jaw.

"I'm allowing you one chance," he murmured. "Don't waste it."

She said half a "What," meaning it for a question. Then he dropped his hand, and Sif woke alone and sweating in her room. She started upright and looked, wildly, about, but of course it was her room in the palace and Loki was not there; no one was there. She'd closed the window. The curtains hung limply to either side. Her nightshirt stuck to her skin.

Sif threw the covers back and grabbed at her shirt, then she paused and looked to the mirror. He'd never been there, she thought; that, at least, had been on her. And anyway, hadn't she just ravaged him in his absurd dream throne? His collar popped open, his long throat exposed. Much lower and she would have found the knot in his clavicle. Sif sweltered. She stripped out of her shirt.

Brushing her hair back from her face, she lowered her right hand. Experimentally, she curled her fingers. It was only a hand. What was that he'd done there at the end? Doors opening, she thought, a dark passage through the heart of a tree. Yggdrasill.

 

She looked to her bedroom door. Then she stood, naked but for her underthings, and held her hand as a fist and crossed to it. She set the fingers of her right hand on the handle. An itch snarled at her palm. She closed her fingers on the handle and thought:

"Don't waste it," Loki breathed across her skin.

Sif let go of the handle. She swapped her right hand for her left and turned the handle viciously. The locking spells shivered, then the door opened onto the empty palatial corridor. She hoped one of the sentinels wasn't out there. Presumably they'd seen worse than Sif, nearly nude. She dragged the door shut. The wards wriggled into place again.

If she was going to go charging into the wilds of Yggdrasill, and she was though the thought was so huge she almost couldn't bear to think of it, for _Yggdrasill_ — She would need more than the clothes on her back drag him out of the earth. Sif raked a hand through her hair. Her palm itched no more, but the rest of her made up for it.

She turned on her room. In the silence, another thought dropped. If she went, when would she ever return?

"I can't leave him," she said.




 

 _iv: each good-bye._

More than sword or shield or food enough to live off for a week if she stretched it out right, the other arrangements she needed to make weighed upon her. She had so little to leave to the care of another but the ties that she would loose upon leaving. It was no simple trip, to leave Asgard as she would. She did not know when she would return.

Sif hefted her bag again across her shoulders. She considered the weight and dropped it to her bed. Not too heavy. Loki would have simply vanished with not a word to anyone. He had done so before and come back light on his toes as a cat on its feet, without anything to say for himself.

"Where have you been?" she'd asked once, when she was young.

"Oh," he'd said, smiling, "here and there. Out and about. You have dirt on your nose," and he'd flicked the end of it.

She'd held him responsible for his absences then. She supposed she'd never stopped.

Who was it she meant to seek? The boy who had called her horse and pinched her nose? The man who wouldn't be caught staring at her? The king who had sent the Destroyer and watched as it would have killed her? Love was a painful thing inside her, all knotted up and pulled apart and put together again. She'd seen it like so in his eyes, too; she'd heard it in how he'd said, "I adore you," as if he tore it out of his chest like a burr from flesh.

Sif busied herself with her bag, checking the pockets, drawing the strings tight, weighing it again though she knew it balanced. If she went, she could not come back. Not soon. And was he worth it? Was Loki enough to leave Asgard, to leave all she'd worked for and all she'd sacrificed and all she'd made for herself? She had left her home, come to the palace, worked harder than any of the boys her age only to be acknowledged as a warrior, cracked her palms and rubbed her fingers almost to the bone, bled and sweat and bled more. All to be here.

She set her hands on top of the bag. Food enough for a week, if she halved it. More if she stretched it out, she thought absently.

Was it worth it to give up all this? Was it worth it to give it up for Loki?

That was the question, the real one, the one at the heart of everything else she had wondered and demanded and asked of herself before she'd asked it of him. What the answer was, she didn't know. Every sacrifice, rooted in uncertainty. Every line drawn in the sand, a question mark.

She couldn't leave him.

"No," she said aloud. She balled her hands. "I won't leave him."

No person was meant for another, she had said to him. She meant it. She believed it. She knew it to be true. She knew, too, that this was a choice, that it was hers to make, and that when she chose to give up Asgard for Loki the decision was hers. It was not that she couldn't leave him. It was that she wouldn't, and that was the difference. That was all the difference.

Sif hooked her sheathed blade to the top of the bag and tied a shield to the back. She yanked the strings tight as they'd go; they bit the bottoms of her fingers. Saying good-bye would be sharper still. It wasn't for good—if she could leave, she could return—but she thought the distinction would be difficult to explain.

The morning waited for her. She had slept little after waking, choosing instead to work in the dark hours of early morning. Now the sun had come up and the hour was pale, day a new thing. Again the urge to simply run came over her. Sif shouldered her bag. Using her left hand, she opened her door and stepped out into the hall.

The warriors three, first. Not always to be found in each other's company, for they all of them had their own lives and particular interests; nevertheless often to be found together. So she found them in the second garden, which was a favorite of Hogun's for the orange trees, which bore fruit through all seasons but winter.

"And I say I have had enough of oranges," said Volstagg. "Oranges, oranges. Enough! Even the smell is too much. Could we not retire to the practice yard?"

"I like oranges," Hogun said mildly.

Fandral, caught in the act of throwing his eyes halfway to the sky, spotted her between the trees. "Sif! Please tell me you've come to save me from these two graceless louts."

She stooped beneath the laden branches of one especially heavy tree to join them.

"I think not," she said. "This battle is yours."

"Inconsiderate," said Fandral. He leaned back against the tree he'd claimed as his own. A pile of orange peelings littered the grass left of his thigh. "I'm very disappointed in you." He passed a square up to Hogun.

Hogun looked at Sif. His eyes were dark, steady. She had left her bag beneath a tree three rows over, but she and Hogun had ever been of a kind.

"You are going," he said.

"Going?" Volstagg looked up from contemplation of his axe. "Who is going and to where?"

"I am," said Sif. She raised her chin. "I go in search of Loki."

"Loki!" cried Volstagg. He set his axe down.

Fandral said, "You cannot be serious. It's to laugh. Volstagg, it's to laugh!"

But Volstagg did not laugh. Seated cross-legged at the base of a tree, his beard shining like fire in the soft morning light, he looked Sif over and she thought he saw more than Hogun had. That was the thing about Volstagg. He knew hearts.

"He lives?" Volstagg asked.

"He lives," said Sif.

"You know this," said Hogun.

She nodded. "I do."

"But where," asked Fandral, "and how?" He threw a length of orange peel aside and gave the rest to Hogun. "Is he here in Asgard?"

"No," Sif said, "he is elsewhere."

"How will you find him?"

"How can you find him?" asked Fandral over Volstagg.

She curled her fingers. The key burnt into her palm was still. How to explain it to them?

"He showed me a way," she said at last.

"Then we shall accompany you," Fandral declared. "He was our friend, too."

"No," said Sif. She looked them over: Fandral, Volstagg, grim Hogun who was as soft as the other two in his own sharp-edged way. "You must stay here. All three of you. Asgard has need of you. Thor has need of you."

"We cannot let you journey alone," Volstagg protested. "That would be—" He cast about for a word strong enough.

Hogun said, "Disgraceful."

"Abominable," said Fandral.

"Unthinkable!" said Volstagg.

Sif smiled. She would miss them, she thought. Oh, she'd miss them. Her friends, her kind friends. She had looked up to them so as a child and never known she would love them as she did now. If she had given up one family, she had found another.

"Then you will have to get used to being disgraceful," she said, "and abominable, and unthinkable. This is something I must do myself."

Fandral picked at the fresh peel of a new orange. Bits flaked out from under his thumb. His cheek worked, a muscle ticking. Volstagg looked as if he'd something grand building in his throat, a passionate speech to convince her of the necessity of noble companions, true companions, a company to stand at her side, to fight for her as she would them.

Hogun said, "Then you must go."

Volstagg cried out. "Hogun! You must not!"

But he had. "She is not a child," said Hogun, and he looked first to Volstagg, who looked ashamed and then away, and then to Fandral, who scowled still.

"Have faith in me," Sif said to them.

"Will you return to us?" asked Volstagg when Fandral would not.

"Of course," she said, for she would. She would. "Though I not know when."

Fandral sighed noisily, then the weight fell off his shoulders and he looked, if not merry, then near enough again. "Well, if you must," he said.

"I must," she said. She smiled at them and ached to do so. "I will miss you."

"If you ever have need of us," said Volstagg, then he stopped, for the Bifröst was broken. What ways left to those who were not Loki?

"Thank you," she said, and she meant it dearly; she meant it absolutely.

"Oh," said Volstagg wretchedly. Hogun set his hand upon Volstagg's shoulder.

"Perhaps you should go," said Fandral kindly, "before Volstagg begins to weep."

"As if you would not!" said Volstagg, though he did not deny it.

Fandral only looked to his orange again. He turned it round in his hands then began to tear at the peel.

Hogun looked to Sif. Gently, he inclined his head. "Until we meet again."

"'Til then," said Sif.

And she left them: Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun, the warriors three, friends and dear to her.

The queen she came upon at her work. The sun rose at her back. The room was bare still, as yet unshaped. She bore a length of chalk in her fingers, but Frigg did not use it. She was looking out the window when Sif knocked at the opened door.

Frigg turned. For a moment, she was still, so very still, and Sif knew this was where Loki had learned it. Then her lips compressed; her eyelashes dropped. The queen's shoulders bowed, just so.

"You deserve to know," said Sif. "I leave to look for Loki. Today."

The queen looked up, and she was only Frigg: Loki's mother, Sif's patron. The queen, second only to the Allfather, but a person besides. She searched Sif's face.

"So soon," she said. "How?"

"He knows a way," said Sif, "or part of a way."

Frigg exhaled, and in her breathing out, she looked briefly wry. "Of course he does." The memory of a smile faded from her face. She leaned toward Sif, across the table. The chalk pressed into the edge. "Do you go alone?"

"I must," said Sif. "He will allow no one else."

"So I see," said the queen. She settled in her chair. The chalk hung forgotten from her fingers.

"Tell Thor," Sif said to her. "The truth. About Loki."

"Have you not told him?" the queen asked, and Sif shook her head.

"It isn't mine to tell," she said, though the weight of it in her chest dragged at her. Such a secret, and for so many years— But it was not hers.

"I wanted to thank you," Sif said then, as the queen's eyes fell and her shoulders turned in against her chest. Frigg raised her eyes again. Sif went on:

"For all you've done for me, when I was a girl and then later, when I came to the palace. You were always kind to me." She corrected it: "You have always been kind to me."

"Oh, Sif," said Frigg, and her voice broke. "If anyone has been kind, it has been you."

Sif laughed, not meaning to. "I have never been—"

"You have," said Frigg, with sudden firmness. She drew upright. Her hair shone, bright as the circlet which rested on her brow. If she was Frigg, she was the queen, too. She glowed with the sunlight.

"Thank you," said Sif.

She would have turned then, bowed and left Frigg there in that room, had Frigg not held her hand out and said, "Oh, come here, Sif Lieffsdottir."

Sif lingered, then she put her left hand upon the queen's outstretched wrist. The queen wrapped her fingers about Sif's wrist and drew her near. She kissed Sif lightly once on the left cheek and lightly once on the right cheek.

"Take my blessing with you," said the queen, "for yourself. Sif, noblest of all Asgard's warriors."

"My queen," said Sif. Her throat hurt.

"When you return," the queen said, "I would ask that you call me only Frigg."

She drew back from Sif and sat again. Sif's arm was warm where the queen's fingers had rested a moment, and she thought perhaps the queen's blessing had been more than simply words given to her.

"Of course," said Sif, "my queen."

Frigg smiled.

Sif left the queen, too.

Then: Thor.

Thor was hardest of all to find. Time was he would have been the easiest, at the practice yards training or with the warriors three, no more the boy who had tagged along but a companion true. She might have found him in the armory or drinking with the king's men or even playing at sticks with the children who loitered about in the streets outside the palace, but he was in none of those places. Perhaps he'd gone to the broken remains of the Bifröst, as he had done so before, but Sif could not bring herself to turn down that crumpled way. Heimdall's eyes saw all, and she had not forgotten what he had said to her on the bridge.

Instead, Sif climbed the palace, looking to the hideaway (he was not there), to his chambers, the long walkway which wound about the inner sanctum. He'd become a ghost, but no, that was the wrong thing to think. Ghosts faded, but Thor had grown heavy, weighted with loss and love. Emptiness of feeling did not drive him to introspection, but an awareness of feeling.

On a whim, and doubtful, Sif looked into the small study which, though formally unclaimed, had always belonged to Loki. Thor was there. He'd a little journal in his hands, and he was smiling down at it. Three chairs in the room, one each for Loki and Sif and Thor, and he stood by the window.

"What is it?"

He looked up. His smile dimmed. The particulars of their last conversation crept like unwanted wraiths into the air. Shame was why he pressed his lips together like that. Oh, Thor, Sif thought, and love for him made her chest close.

"Have you found his joke book?" she pressed.

Thor grinned then. His mood fell from him, a discarded cloak. He turned the journal about and said, "What noble aspect the simple horse."

Sif squinted at the page, but from the door she could only make out a bit of pencil scribbled across the paper. Sighing loudly, that he might know what a sacrifice it was for her to come into the room, Sif crossed over to the window.

"That's me," she said after a moment, with more surprise than perhaps it warranted. A rudimentary sketch, a blocky outline without detail, but it was Sif. She didn't know why it should surprise her as it did; after all, hadn't Loki told her he'd— Her face itched. Anyway, that had been a dream.

"Really," said Thor. "I thought it looked more like Buttercup—" meaning, of course, the dappled mare in the stables.

Sif hit him for that. Thor laughed and held his hands up for peace. The page wrinkled beneath his thumb. Sif hit him again, but she weakened the blow, and he grinned at her over her fist. Perhaps she should have softened the next blow as well, but if anyone in her near acquaintance deserved honesty, she supposed it would have to be Thor. She dropped her hand.

"I'm going," she said.

Humor still brightened him. "Where?" he asked, then his eye fell on her pack at the door. He lit up brighter still. "Have you found another nest? If you've need of my hammer, speak, and I shall join you gladly to slay the beasts."

She scoffed. "As if I could not slay them all myself!"

"Hogun took five," he reminded her, and _that_ deserved another fist to his shoulder. Thor shrugged it off. Not for the first time Sif reflected on the injustices of the world, that Thor should be so huge and so dense.

Like an echo: "You're avoiding the question," Loki had said.

I am not a coward, she thought fiercely.

Sif looked away from Thor and across the room. The study had changed not at all, the same as it had been when Loki fell from the sky. She would have thought a trace of him would linger here, but it was only a room after all, and Loki did not linger.

"The last we spoke," Sif said, "I told you I dreamed of Loki, that I spoke with him and I walked with him."

The broad and merry lines of Thor's face folded. The effect was grim, severe, but she knew it was not for her.

"I remember," he said.

"So," said Sif. She squared her shoulders. Here was the blow. "He has told me how to find him. I leave today to seek him out."

Thor turned on her. His jaw tightened, warning. "If this is a jest—"

"Do not misunderstand me," she snapped. Her hair swung violently from its tie as she rounded on him. "And do not do me the dishonor of thinking me so poor a friend as to joke of Loki's living."

Narrow-eyed, he stared at her as a hawk would a snake; then his mouth quirked and he bent his head. He looked down to the journal. His thumb bit into the page. The thick line of his shoulders turned down. Sif set her hand on his arm.

"I saw him fall, Sif," he said. "Now you say to me that he lives."

"Loki always had his ways," she said. "You haven't forgot. His shadows, his scouts, how he could vanish and appear in another place. Is it so strange that in his falling he might have found a way?"

Thor snapped the journal shut. "I shall go with you."

"No," Sif said, her hand hard on his arm. "Thor. No. I go alone."

A cloud knit his brow. His mouth turned mutinously. "He is my brother. You cannot expect me to stay in Asgard and to wait for you."

"That is precisely what I expect," she said promptly. The storm thickened in his eyes. It was a cruel blow, but she could not spare him it: "He would not welcome you."

Thor flinched. The clouds broke apart; they scattered. In their wake, he was alone again and bowed, as Thor never bowed, with grief. His jaw worked beneath his beard.

"When will you return?" he asked at last. A rasp lined his voice.

She ran her hand down his arm then drew her fingers away. "I cannot say." Gently, she said, "After what he has done, you know that he would not come freely or easily."

He gestured impatiently. "How am I to stand idly by—"

"You won't," said Sif, for when had Thor ever stood idly by anything? "You have your duties here, and Asgard will need protecting, as she always does. And," she added more lightly, "you have your lady Jane to look to."

Thor huffed a breath; it caught in his nose. Perhaps he meant it as a laugh, but it was too rough and too lonely a thing to make it.

"Never did I think things would turn out like this," he said.

"None of us did," said Sif. "But you must keep faith. In me. In Loki. In Jane."

"I do," said Thor. "I shall." He always had.

And Sif left Thor, son of Odin.

She descended from the palace to the city, and in the city she went to her mother's house. The sun rose higher, hotter. Sweat beaded her nape, thickest where she'd drawn her hair tight and up. The pack weighed but didn't slow her. The hilt of her blade pressed against her head, and the ends of the strings pinged off the shield.

Warriors were far from an uncommon sight in the city, but warriors fitted for a long week's journey were not. A little group of children ran past her and turned to gawk as they did so. Morning traffic was always worst the nearer to afternoon it got, and as the afternoon drew closer upon them the streets clotted. An older man jostled her pack, turned to say, "My apologies, sir," and then looked twice at her face. His eyebrows reached astronomical heights. Sardonically, Sif held her hand out to say: Please, you first. Looking as if all the blood in his chest had migrated to his head, he hurried past her.

That, at least, she would not miss. She found the more she thought of it the more it seemed an adventure. Yggdrasill, he'd said. A joke or true, still it remained something she had never seen before, something she suspected few others had seen; and with Asgard broken off from the rest of the worlds, it was decidedly _elsewhere_. Her feet itched. She bounced off her heels and came down again on them.

The side street beckoned. Sif turned down it. Her mother's house sat between two homes of similar stature, along a paved steppe which looked down over a small incline and onto a street which ran below. The lamp set over the door was out; it hung without swinging from the arch. The tree which grew by the door had begun to blossom, late again.

Sif stopped at the door. The itching in her feet had gone. Her toes curled and uncurled. The paint on the door, enchanted never to peel or to chip, had faded, the red nearer now to pink. Her mother's house, but it was her father's shadow which she saw in the dulling color. Sif set her jaw and turned the doorknob.

The front room was empty. Her mother's work lined the table, baskets of sewing stuff half-unpacked and a stack of untended shirts hidden beneath folds of red cloth. The sweet scent of rising yeast filled the room. So strange, how in but a moment she could feel as if she were a child again, returning home from a short excursion to eat her mother's bread and sit in her mother's lap and watch her as she sewed up Lieff's shirts.

Sif closed the door. A bell jangled. A new ornament of her mother's, hooked to the top of the door. She kept forgetting it was there. Three slender plaits hung from the hook and spun about the bell, a red plait for Lieff, a blue plait for Astra, and a purple one for Sif in absentia. She touched a finger to the blue plait as it spun first to the right then to the left.

A shoe, scuffing across stones. She turned.

Her father was at the door to the hallway. She hadn't seen him properly in years. Spectacles sat on the end of his nose. Little angry lines pinched the corners of his mouth; they creased his cheeks. His eyes flicked; he looked her over. Sif drew herself up so her spine ached for its straightness. He was still taller than her.

His mouth curled. Whatever he'd seen in her, it wasn't enough. Her father turned away. His heel scraped over the floor. He passed down the hall and out of sight. She heard him calling for Astra.

Sif's shoulders trembled. She would not let them fall. She would not bend her spine, not here in this house which was her father's as much as her mother's. Jerking, she slung her bag down from her shoulder.

"Sif!"

She looked up, too late. Astra, small, enveloped her. Her mother smelled of unleavened bread and faintly of sugar. Sif wound her arm about her mother's shoulders and held her there. Astra sighed, then she turned and bussed Sif's cheek and said, "You have to let me go."

Sif loosened her arm. Her mother, smiling, sank back on her heels. Her hair, normally so tidy, puffed out in waves about her face. Flour whitened her fingers. Absently, she brushed at Sif's sleeves.

"Two visits so close together," she said. "You're going to spoil me."

Sif brushed a length of her mother's hair back behind her ear. "I should have come sooner," said Sif, "and more often."

"Yes," said Astra, "you should have."

She flicked her thumb over Sif's nose then she wiped the flour away with her sleeve. Sif wrinkled her nose.

Astra said, "What's done is done. Come with me to the kitchen and I'll get you something to eat."

She turned. Sif hefted her bag and followed her mother. The kitchen opened out onto a modest space out back, where her father kept his garden. Astra had left the doors open to air the blistering kitchen out. The stove worked hotly.

"Set your things by the door," Astra called over her shoulder. She'd a plate set out at the table already, and butter and a knife and a bit of bread from the day before. Now she brought a length of cut meat to the table as well.

Sif lowered her bag. The shield clanked softly on the stones. Her mother winced, a twitch at her mouth, her eyes. She set the plate of meat down and turned from the table.

"Would you like juice or milk? Both," said Astra. She bent to the cooling cupboard. "If you're going somewhere you'll need all the strength you can get."

Of course Astra knew. Her mother had always known. When she'd been a girl, who was it who had mended her torn skirts in the wee hours of the morn before Lieff rose? Who had seen the restless wilds in Sif before Sif knew them and told her to go out and play till dark?

"Mother," said Sif, helpless.

"Oh, don't," said Astra. She turned, a bottle in one hand and a jug in the other. Her hair fussed before her eyes and she shook it from her face. "You're going away. I can see that. You've gone away before. You'll be back."

Sif swallowed. Astra set the bottle and the jug down upon the table and went to fetch a glass. She stood, holding it in her hand, and she said, "Damn. I need two," and Sif took the glass from her.

"I should have visited you," said Sif. "I should have done more than I did."

"You and your father never got along," Astra said.

Sif shook her head, though it was true.

"I shouldn't have left you as I did," she said. She looked down to the glass. The lip had chipped on one side. "At the very least I should have asked the queen if you might come with me."

"And leave my house!" Astra cried. She snorted. Her teeth showed, there at the corner. "I wouldn't give up this house for any number of servants or gilded curtains or kings."

"Have a care," Sif warned, though she smiled.

"If the Allfather doesn't like it, he can fetch me himself," Astra said stoutly. She swept a hand through her hair. The silver in it shone, more now than before, the grey outnumbering the dark.

Sif turned the glass over. The chipped spot glittered.

"When will you return?" Astra asked.

"Not for a very long time," said Sif.

"So," said Astra dryly. "No difference there."

Into the chasm between them Sif said, "I am sorry."

"I know you are," said Astra. She softened. "You don't have to be. Now, sit and eat. I don't for a minute think you'll have anything decent to eat from now till I next see you."

Sif sat at the little table in the kitchen exactly as she did when she was young and her mother had scolded her for running out of the house before eating. The stove clicked on.

"Here you are," said Astra. She spooned a mound of spiced oatmeal onto Sif's plate.

"Thank you," Sif said.

Astra touched Sif's cheek in passing and bent to kiss her temple. The fragrance of bread and water and sweetness: but that was only part of her mother.

Astra stood and left her to her meal. The meat fell apart nicely between her teeth, but it was difficult to swallow; it stuck so to her tongue. She drank deeply from her glass. The chip worried her lip. She set the cup down.

"I'm going to my room," she said, "and then I'll leave."

"Are you sure you won't take anything with you?" asked her mother. "The bread will be done in a bit."

Sif shook her head. "No. I've enough as it is."

"Well," said Astra. She brushed her hands over her apron.

Sif crossed the distance between them and threw her arms about her mother. Astra gave immediately, falling into Sif's embrace. Sif turned her nose to her mother's hair and wished she weren't so tall, that she hadn't outgrown her mother in this way. She had never outgrown her mother.

"Will you say good-bye to your father?" Astra whispered.

"No," said Sif into her mother's hair. "Let him think what he will."

Astra sighed. Her hands knotted in Sif's back, then they loosened and her arms fell away.

"You should get going," she said, "before I start crying."

"Your tea is burning," said Sif.

Astra swore and turned from her.

At the door, Sif paused. She looked back to her mother, who worked the stove easily, as easy as Sif with a glaive. Her tongue plastered to the roof of her mouth. She dragged it loose again.

"Good-bye," she called.

Astra hefted the teapot and set it upon a cooling stone. Brushing her hair from her eyes, she looked up to Sif. Her dark eyes were muted, soft.

"For now," said Astra.

And Sif left Astra.

She neither saw nor heard tell of her father as she ascended the stairs to her childhood room, which was best. A kettle in the kitchen sounded like a gong off the counter. Somewhere outside children were playing and birds were singing. Life carried on, as it must.

Sif kicked the bedroom door shut at her back. She looked the room over, and she thought, suddenly, how silly it was that neither her mother nor her father had done a thing to change it. It remained as it had when she left it. Her throat pinched. A bird chirped in the tree outside her window, as a bird had chirped there every morning she'd known.

Sif hoisted the bag to her chest. She checked the straps, the ties, the knots. Everything held. She smoothed her hand down the sheathed sword, thought of pulling it loose, then thought better of it.

"Stop stalling," she muttered.

She fitted the straps to her shoulders and turned to the door. A line marked the corner by the hinge on top where she'd thrown a ball at it as a child. Her heart drummed. An itch began in her right palm and spread to her fingertips. Time to go.

Closing her right hand on the knob, she yanked the door open again. A shadowed passage stretched down before her, and a cool wind rose to touch her face. Lights flickered along the edges: a phosphorescent mold. The chirping of the bird at her back was very distant indeed.

Sif descended.




 

 _v: loki dreaming._

He sat in the boughs, and the boughs moved beneath him. A wind stirred them. Loki stirred, too. The cosmos went on and on before him, an endless cavalcade of stars and dust and infinitesimal worlds seen as pale spots against the blackness, which was not empty but rich with life.

A hand at his shoulder. He turned, slightly. The fingers shone, silver laid over brown as armor over skin.

"What is it now?" he asked.

"She is coming," said Yggdrasill.

He could not breathe for how his heart stuck. Then Loki closed his mouth and swallowed. He marshalled control out of the silence.

"Who?" he asked.

"I begin to see why you are appreciated for your wit," said Yggdrasill. She touched a finger to his chin. "But see. You smile."

He turned from the tree. The leaves undulated about him, wafting across the stars, which crossed the sky in remote and graceful circuits.

She was coming. Sif was coming. He touched his mouth. His lips had curled. He could not stop them from it. Joy was a peculiar thing. Hope was even stranger.

Loki looked to the sky.





	8. Interlude.

The queen sat at her loom, but the shuttles were still and silent, the threads strung only a suggestion of what she might make of them. Her hands rested folded together in her lap, and she looked to them where they lay. What fading light showed through the tall windows caught like fire in her golden curls.

Thor stood at the door to his mother's great, empty hall. Like a child trespassing in a sacred place, he could not bring himself to enter. The quiet oppressed. His mother's grief filled the arching vaults, the shadowed corners, the open spaces which the windows welcomed, and in her grief he remembered, though he had not forgot, his own grief. Here in Frigg's court, the absence of Loki made everything dim.

"Mother," he said.

The queen lifted her head. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders. Her face was pinched. She did not weep. In all his life Thor had never seen the queen's eyes clouded with tears.

"Oh, Thor," she said. "I didn't know you were there. Please, come in. Don't linger so. The doorway will close around you."

Her levity fell flat. Frigg turned to her loom. As he crossed to her, she touched the strings, dragging her fingers across them as across the belly of a harp. No other chair accompanied her. Loki, who had liked to surprise the queen at her work, would have conjured one to sit at her side.

Thor stood at her shoulder. He did not know what to say to her. The stupidity of his tongue choked his throat.

Frigg drew her fingers over the strings again. Then she lowered her hand.

"It's so strange," she said. "Now that I've peace, I can't seem to work. I look for tangles, but there are no tangles."

"I am—" Thor swallowed. Clumsy in his armor, he knelt beside her. He covered her hands with his own. "I am sorry, Mother."

She turned her hands over to catch his. Gently, she squeezed his fingers. "Oh, what do you have to be sorry for?"

Loki, hanging from the end of the scepter as the Bifröst fell beneath them, as the bridge which had united the realms collapsed. He had been so close. If Thor had pulled— If he had caught him—

"I let him fall," said Thor.

"There was nothing you could do," said the queen. "It isn't your fault Loki fell."

A shadow bloomed in her face. She looked from him. Thor could not read Frigg as Loki had; as children, this perceived closeness had given Thor cause to envy Loki. But: he was not so obtuse as to not see the guilt in his mother's sorrow. He clasped her hands and leaned toward her, his face turned up to the queen's bent head.

"The responsibility is mine," he said urgently. "If blame must fall, let it fall on me. I should have understood him better."

"It isn't yours to bear," said Frigg. She drew her hand free and rested it lightly on his wrist. "If Loki turned on you," and if he'd Loki's gift for understanding Frigg perhaps he would have known if the way her eyes closed at this meant she did not believe Loki had turned, "it was not on your account.

"I loved him," she said suddenly. She looked into Thor's eyes then and her expression was fierce, fiercer than any such look he had ever seen his graceful, serene mother bear. "He was my son, and I loved him. But now I think I did not love him well."

"Mother—"

Thor made to rise. Her hand on his wrist tightened, clutching his arm, holding him there.

"The truth is out," she said. "Loki knows it. You are his brother, and so you should know as well."

"What?" He looked up to his mother, his beautiful mother whose hands were worn with years of weaving, years of tending to her sons and to the throne. "What truth?"

His mother the queen lifted her hand and touched his cheek, as she had not since he was a child. Thor had not wanted for his mother's comfort as Loki, so often given to crying, had. Now she offered it and he did not know why.

Her lashes dropped. When they rose again, her eyes glimmered oddly.

"Oh, Thor," she said. "Your father and I—we did not mean to do a terrible thing. But I'm afraid we have."

"What is it?" It came out near to a shout. Thor swallowed. "Are you ill?"

"Listen," his mother commanded. Her fingers on his cheek were light; they did not tremble. "You were only a newborn babe when the last of the great wars ended. You wouldn't remember how your father returned from Jötunheimr with another babe."

Thor held tightly to her hand. Her face was pale but set.

"I don't understand," he said.

"We named him Loki," she said, "and we called him Odinson."

*

  
Thor threw open the doors to his father's private rooms and stormed in without invitation or preamble. Odin looked up from his papers. Firelight glinting off the gold walls shone in his hair, his eye, his face, off his patch. He looked ringed with fire, righteous with its power and its strength, which was his own.

"Why did you lie?" Thor shouted. "You should have told us the truth!"

"Is there a reason why you have broken into my chambers?" asked Odin mildly. Thor knew it to be a lie. "Why you accost me as I work?"

Thor would not be silent. He bore down upon his father. Like Loki with a blade, he threw it at his father: "Loki is of the jötnar!"

A change came over Odin. His eye closed. Thor thought, for one unspeakable moment, Odin meant to turn his face away. Then he opened his eye again and he said to Thor,

"So your mother has told you."

"As she should have years before!"

Thor paced before his father's desk. His hands worked, tightening into fists and then easing only to tighten again. He wanted to break his father's desk in two, tear the tapestries from the walls, throw all of them at his father and see his father bow his head.

"How could you not tell us? How could you have hidden this from us?"

"I thought only to protect you," said Odin. "You were but babes, both of you, and the war had only just ended. Should I have presented him to our people as a jötunn? Do you think they would have welcomed him?"

Thor slammed his hands down upon Odin's desk. A jar of writing implements fell from the corner. His father stared unblinking up at him.

"You should have told us!" Thor snarled. "You should have taught Loki not to fear or hate the jötunn when you knew he was one!"

Odin rose then, and though Thor stood taller than his father and had stood taller for years unnumbered, he remembered what it had been to be a child and small and guilty beneath his father's eye.

"Loki was jötunn," said Odin, "but he was of Asgard, too. What I did, I did for the future of both our worlds. He was Laufey's son and heir to the throne of Jötunheimr. If he knew Asgard, if he cared for it—"

"Enough of your plans!" Thor roared. "Enough of your lessons! Loki is no more a piece on your gameboard than I! And if you had remembered this, perhaps he would not have tried to destroy Jötunheimr."

"You would lecture me on responsibility?" Odin thundered. He rose higher still; he filled the room with his fury and his power.

"I would call you for what you are!"

"I had thought you had learned humility," said Odin, cold as winter, "but it would appear you did not."

"And what will you do?" demanded Thor. "Will you cast me out again, with the Bifröst broken? Will you strip me of my titles? Of the throne? I am the last son you have, Father."

"Get out of my presence," said Odin. He raised his chin. His eye shone, a cold star made distant. "You will not speak to me again."

"Only if you will not speak to me," said Thor.

He made to turn then stopped. His father was small behind his desk, but he was proud, proud as Thor was proud. He would not bow his head. He would not acknowledge fault or weakness. He had never done so.

"I told you once not long ago there would never be a better father than you," Thor said. "I was wrong to say it."

"Begone," said Odin, and his voice rang off the walls, the ceiling, Thor's bones.

Thor turned from Odin then. Mjolnirr was heavy at his side; it dragged at his hip and weighed him down. His brother had fallen and he had thought himself at fault. Thor would have torn the doors to his father's rooms from their hinges and thrown them at him. Then he thought of Jane, and instead, he looked over his shoulder.

Odin remained, standing, unbent and unyielding and blind to the little grief which showed in the lines of his face. Even in his own anger at Odin, Thor felt something like sorrow wash over him for his prideful father, all-seeing and yet blind to that which was nearest to him.

"Loki lives," Thor said to Odin. "Sif has gone in search of him. I don't think it likely he will return to us."

And Odin bowed his head.

Thor left his father there, alone in his chambers.





	9. 7.

_i: bore-tooth._

The soft glow led her down, down, down through that narrow darkness till at last she came to another door, this one crafted of wood. Sif could not think how long she had been at it, for time was strange in the dark, only that she was tired of stairs and never wanted to see another set of them again. She set her hand in the groove and pushed at the door. Light flooded the stairwell; she turned, squinting, from it and stepped out into day.

The door closed at her back. The texture on this side was strange: deep ridges ran the length of it, and it looked like nothing so much as a box cut out of or into some enormous tree. It dawned on her slowly, for her eyes still stung with the light, that this was because it was cut into some enormous tree. She took a step back then another. Her feet slid through grooves, like the little channels in a tree branch magnified more times than she could imagine, and this was because she stood on a branch so wide as to dwarf even Odin's great hall.

Sif looked up and the trunk, which was so vast she could not see how it ended whether across or along, was surrounded by clouds; it rose through them, thick clouds in colors like stardust or distant nebulae. Through the clouds where they parted, though it was bright as day about her, she spotted stars. The knowledge of where she was and the enormity struck her in the gut, and she reeled as a child looking down from a high tower. Loki had spoken truly.

"Yggdrasill," she breathed.

A scratching, as claws on wood, startled her. Sif grabbed at her sword, drawing it free of its sheath and turning, at the ready, to the sound.

A little red squirrel stared up at her between her feet and said in a resonant baritone, "Oh, put that away. I've already had twice my share of acorns. I have no designs upon your flesh."

The squirrel smiled so his teeth showed, and they were long and sharp. She thought perhaps the squirrel had grown a few inches.

"You'll forgive me if I don't," she said. "I've fought shape-changers before."

"I'm no shape-changer!" protested the squirrel.

He darted suddenly up her leg. His claws pricked her through her trousers. Sif shook her leg once; he would not be thrown. The squirrel settled at her knee. He _had_ grown larger, now the size and weight of a small cat.

"I am Ratatoskr," said the squirrel. His fat tail quivered. "And what's your name? Go on, don't be shy. I won't bite."

Sif had fought wyrms, traversed between stars, spoken with weird and wondrous beasts, and nearly died twice—once at the hands of the man she would save. Never before had she spoken with a squirrel, no matter how large.

"I am Sif," she told the beast at her knee. "I come from Asgard, in search of Loki, who is lost."

"Oh, _him_ ," said the squirrel. He leapt from her knee and landed neatly on the trunk, no longer the size of a small cat but a middling hound. She could not make out where the door had been.

"You know of him?" She drew close. "Have you seen him? Do you know where he is?"

"I know of many people," said Ratatoskr vaguely, "and many things and many whats and many whoms and many wheres. It's my job, you know. To know things. I'm very important. If I weren't around to entertain Níðhöggr and the eagle—" He clattered his tongue on his teeth.

"But do you know of Loki?" she persisted. "Do you know where I might find him?"

Ratatoskr stretched his neck out, and his head was enormous, like that of a horse. His eyes were huge and dark. Sif tightened her hand about the blade's grip, but she did not step back or turn from his consideration. His teeth showed: he smiled.

"What will you give me if I tell you?"

She raised her chin. "What would you ask of me?"

"Why do you look for him?" asked Ratatoskr. "What does he mean to you? Do you know what he has done? What will come about because of this?"

Ratatoskr did not look away from her. His tail had stilled. He'd grown larger yet, a small wyrm coated in red fur.

"No," she said. She did not know. "But he is dear to me, and I would save him."

"And what of you?" asked Ratatoskr. "Are you dear to him? Would he save you?"

In her dreams he had touched her face and said her name soft on his tongue, as if her name were another bit of magic he had to learn. As children he had teased her and called her horse and pulled her hair as if to spur her on, and when they had grown he had called her _Lady Sif_ instead of horse and looked to her in such a way as to make her bones ache. At his order the sentinel had followed her to Midgard.

"I think," said Sif, "but I cannot know. All I know is myself."

"Well, that isn't much," said Ratatoskr critically, but he subsided and as he subsided he grew smaller. "It doesn't matter anyway. I know many things but I don't know where Loki is." He did not seem bothered by this.

Sif found her breath short in her throat. Her teeth hurt, clenched so tightly. She swallowed.

"Then why," she said as reasonably as she might, "have you held me here with this nonsense?"

Ratatoskr turned his head to one side and eyed her.

"There's no need to shout. I said _I_ don't know where Loki is, but I know of someone who does. Three sisters spin below. One has seen him fall, another has seen where, and the third knows how you might find him."

A savage hope filled her. Sif drew closer still. She set her hand upon the trunk and looked up to him. Her nails bit into the bark.

"Where are they? How do I find them?"

"That," Ratatoskr said with true regret, "I cannot say. They have forbidden me from their well. But," he added, "there is another. If you prove worthy to drink from his well then he will tell you how to find the sisters Urðr and Verðandi and Skuld."

"And where is he?" she snapped.

Ratatoskr moved swiftly. He was above her then before her, his pointed face near enough she could feel his whiskers on her cheeks. She recoiled and hated herself for recoiling. She had not drawn back when he had been large enough to bite her head from her neck.

He studied her a long moment, unmoving. Then he said, "I would ask a memory of you, but I think it will be more fun to see what you will do."

He turned and he was only a squirrel again, a little red thing scurrying higher up the trunk. The clouds began to close around him. His voice drifted:

"Go to the moss-side and follow it down till you reach the first root. There you will find the well Mímisbrunnr and Mímir beside it. If you drink from the waters, he will tell you where to find Urðarbrunnr."

"How do I get down there?" she shouted after him.

"You're clever," said Ratatoskr, "I think. If not, then climb. I hope you brought something to eat." His voice thinned, then that, too, faded.

The clouds closed about Yggdrasill. The scent of rain washed over her, and on the far side of the branch, a lazy drizzle began. Sif turned the blade over in her hand, gripping the hilt and releasing; then she sheathed it. The moss-side. She considered the vastness of the tree and the rain driving more strongly now. In an hour it would be upon her.

Sif turned her back to the storm and began to walk.




 

 _ii: loki dreaming._

Loki looked to the sky and in the sky: the stars, the worlds, the movements of distant galaxies as they spun or consumed each other or split apart, died and were born. The universe moved about him. Universes moved about him. If he'd time enough he would chart them, but even as he thought it he knew it untrue.

The branches swayed beneath him. Yggdrasill walked, restless.

"You say you cannot dream," Loki said, watching a star collape into itself. "What do you do when you sleep?"

"I watch," said Yggdrasill. She paced. "I see. Your Heimdall has an eye for each of the nine realms of Asgard, but I am all the realms and Asgard, too."

Loki ran a finger down the branch alongside his leg. Six wooden marbles fell into his hand. He heard Yggdrasill swat at her arm.

"Don't do that," said Yggdrasill. "That itches."

"Sorry," said Loki. He threw one marble in the air and caught it on his finger. Idly, he bounced it, then he tossed a second marble up and a third.

That dot there, he thought to be Goðheimr. It shone so brightly, how could it not bear Asgard? Homesickness washed over him, then it faded and it was only sickness, a knot in his belly. Home, but it was not his. First one son of Odin cast out, then the other, but Loki, king, had exiled himself. He flicked one of the marbles out into space.

A wasp stung his ear. Loki clapped a hand to his head and turned. The wooden marble rolled alongside his leg. He considered it.

"You are being very rude," Yggdrasill said. "Please stop vandalizing my person."

"I didn't know you had a person," he said.

"I have several," said Yggdrasill, "in many senses of the possession."

He scooped the marble up again and dropped it in his hand with the rest. They knocked together along his fingers. His shoulders itched. He wanted for Sif. He wanted to rest his head on her strong shoulder and weave his fingers through her hair and have her hands on his face. His face.

Loki pressed the marbles to the branch and rolling his hand over them, he pushed them back into the wood.

" _Thank_ you," said Yggdrasill.

He bowed his head. "Of course. But it was nothing."

The stars, a hundred thousand stars, millions of stars scattered throughout the cosmos, and all the worlds strewn among them. Goðheimr was but one. And the other realms— A question burned in his throat. Loki touched his tongue to his teeth. He made a decision.

"Where is Jötunheimr?" he asked. He did not falter. He was proud of that, and sardonic at his pride. If he could not name it, then he'd no hope at all.

"Would you like to see her?" asked Yggdrasill.

He did not know if he did. _There are no monsters,_ Yggdrasill had said to him.

"Yes," he said.

"Let me see if I can remember," said Yggdrasill, then she threw out her arms and the sky dropped onto Loki.




 

 _iii: the unconscious one._

Time had worked weirdly there in that long passage that connected her room to the tree, and that weirdness carried over. Daylight lingered well after what she would have thought night. The storm caught up with her halfway across the branch. Sif pulled her hood up and slogged on through the tempest. Rainwater sweeping down the grooves yanked at her feet. If she fell, it would thunk her head twice on the wood, then her general weight would hold her down.

The rain cleared in the afternoon, morning, midnight, whenever it was there in the ramparts of Yggdrasill. Vast shadows moved across the bough: leaves, far above her. Perhaps she was closer to the roots than she'd presumed. She stopped to eat: a handful of dried apple crisps, a bite of bread, water. Her hair dried slowly at her back. Sif drew her knees to her chest and set her chin between them.

How far to the moss-side? More pressingly: who was Ratatoskr that she should trust him? She ran her tongue over her teeth, picking at them. The vastness of the task set before her settled upon her shoulders. Sif blew her lips out. _Horse,_ she imagined Loki saying fondly. Loki. Too late to go back, and she'd promised him she would find him.

She spread the fingers of her right hand out across the ridge rising by her hip. The magic had gone out of her palm, the key used up.

Sif leaned her head back. She gazed up the trunk, up the ridges to where they softened and then faded in the incipient cloud cover. The natural lines cut into the bark gave her footholds, handholds. She could scale the trunk through the grooves and rest when she needed to in the knots and divots that rose periodically. The sunburnt lands had been far nastier.

Sif took another quick drag on her canteen and swished the water around her mouth. Rising, she shouldered her bag. Puddles spotted the branch, and the bark was soft beneath her boots; it caved underfoot. Sif pressed on.

As she walked, she thought of Loki: black hair curling or slicked back, the furtive line of his mouth, how his lashes covered his eyes. His mouth had been the same, his hair, the way he looked at her or looked away. Jötunn, but he was Loki. The 'but' picked at her. Growing, she had known the jötnar as monsters, as little more than savage beasts, but Loki was hardly a monster, and if Loki, who was jötunn, was not a monster, then: were any of them monsters? Had she been wrong all her life to think them so? If Loki was a jötunn, then were they even a _them_ , a safe bogey, an other she could look at from a distance and deem lesser?

Her lips had burned when she'd kissed him, her skin blistering as it froze against his skin. Then: his magic, rolling warm through her, healing her as she hurt, mending her as she broke. He'd hissed when she put her hand on his cheek. Had it hurt him, then, for her to touch him?

She thought of his throat, how it worked, long muscles sliding and the knot in his throat bobbing as he swallowed. His fingers slithering low on her arse, biting into the muscle, the fat so round there. His teeth on her tongue, how he'd groaned for her. "I want to slip under your armor," he'd said, and his palm had rubbed over her hipbone.

Sif sweltered under her leather plate. She was as yet damp from the rain, and she felt rather like she'd walked through steam. No more thinking of sex—or, as she thought of his long and graceful fingers and of how he said her name, his cleverness, his infuriating arrogance, the smiles which toyed with his lips, of Loki. The knowledge of exactly how much of her life she'd devoted specifically to thinking not only not of sex but not of sex with Loki depressed her. She prided herself on honesty, and here she'd lied outrageously for years. That, she thought grimly, was the sort of thing Loki would do.

She stomped clear to the edge of the bough and looked down. The trunk went on and on and on. Thick branches jutted at intervals from its side. More clouds littered the way, hiding the rest of the tree from her. For all she knew, the roots were right there. And how far was right there? She looked back the way she'd come. It was day still; it was always day. She had the sudden, sinking feeling that she ought to have taken her mother up on her offer. The next talking squirrel she met, she was killing it for the meat, directions be damned.

Sif planted her feet in a tapering groove and looked as far out as she could. Her fingers dug into the trunk. The hugeness of Yggdrasill swamped her. She could just make out a trace of mossy green on the distant curve of the trunk, where it turned away from her. So: climb out. Climb down. Climb across. How very simple.

She eyed the fog below. If she fell, she supposed she would only get there that much sooner. Sif scratched at her hair, then she walked back from the edge. Rest, first. She'd slept in brighter light than this. She shrugged her pack off and pulled the sword and its sheath free of the top loops. With the tree as huge as it was and the peculiarites of Ratatoskr still fresh in her memory, she thought she'd rather not take any chances with whatever crawly things might happen upon her. She'd seen no signs of insects or of worms, but that didn't mean they didn't exist or that they wouldn't take a chunk out of her if given the chance.

Sif leaned into her pack and gazed up at the leaves so far above her. A wind set them to flapping. Like enormous birds. The faint suggestion of chimes and vast wings trickled over her. Rain dripped off the trunk and onto her nape, cooling her hot skin. The air was strange, fresh and thin and clean. She had never thought Asgard's air dirty before. Sif drew in a deep breath and let her eyes fall shut.

A soft mouth at her ear woke her.

Her eyes flew open. She grabbed for her sword; it slid free of the sheath. Sif turned violently upon a stag, who froze. His nostrils flared. His eyes were huge and black, and in them she saw a lacework of stars strung together. The antlers, which twisted together, bore thick, autumnal foliage. His lips parted; his teeth were flat. That was little comfort.

"No harm," said the stag in a small voice. "No harm. Only hungry."

She worked her fingers about the hilt but did not lower her blade.

"If you intend to eat me," she said, "be warned that I will cut your tongue from your throat before you so much as take my nose."

The stag's eyes whitened. He took a half-step back, his hindquarters rising. She raised her blade higher and he froze again in place. His thick throat worked. He was larger than the stags of Asgard, which were larger by far than those pitiful things of Midgard. If he were to charge her—

"Curious," he said feebly. "New smell. Not to eat." And again he whispered: "No harm."

"How did you find me?" She spared a brief glance about her.

"Smell," said the stag. "Came down. Very hungry."

"Came down," she repeated. She looked up the trunk. Little pockmarks stood out in the wetted bark, like hooves pressed into mud. Came _down_.

He took another step back. The muscles in his legs tensed. In a moment, he would fly.

"Stop," Sif commanded.

She threw her hand out. His deep chest filled with air. He sank on his forelegs, gathering strength. She modulated her voice, brought it lower down, made it softer.

"Wait," she said. "Please. No harm."

He blinked, a flicker of his lids. Sif lowered her sword slowly, carefully.

"No harm," she said again. "See? I will cause you no hurt."

The stag stirred. His ears flicked. He straightened out of his crouch. A red-orange leaf tumbled free of his antlers.

"No harm?"

"None at all," she said, "I promise you. How exactly did you come down?"

"Ran," said the stag. He danced on his hooves, a small step, then he settled again. "Flew. Out of the north."

She considered his shoulders (very broad), the set of his back (very sturdy), his legs (very strong). Sif smiled. This unnerved the stag, whose ears twitched back and forth rapidly and out of sync.

"Are you hungry?" she asked him.

His ears stopped, the right facing forward, the left back. He turned his head so he looked down at her with one eye. The left ear slowly came forward.

"Yes," he said.

"If I give you something to eat," she said, "something you've never had before, would you carry me down to the roots?"

The stag digested this. His ears flicked again, then his eyes, too. He stamped one foot twice and then went still all over. Even his breath faded, and the minute trembling in his skin dissipated. Sif waited. A breeze tugged on her hair and threw strands across her jaw, her mouth. She let them play there. No sense in spooking the beast. Another leaf drifted loose from his antlers.

His shoulders shivered. He snapped to again.

"Agreed," said the stag.

She emptied her pack of the rest of the crisps, a half loaf of bread, and two unpeeled oranges. She unwrapped each and held them up to him, and the stag stooped to eat them from her fingers. His lips were soft, like velvet. When he used his teeth, he did so delicately. For all his great size, he was remarkably gentle. Thor would have liked him.

The oranges the stag loved best. He snuffled the broken bits of peel out of her palm and then ate the half-peeled orange in two quick bites. The second orange he ate whole. The sweet scent of the fruit spilled out from his teeth. The stag shuddered and sighed. His thick shoulders drooped. Sif grinned and wiped her wet fingers off on her chestplate.

"Good," said the stag, after a time. His eyes refocused. "A sweet toll."

Then, gracefully, he bent to his knees, his front legs first and then his back legs bowing, too. He lowered his heavy head, and a shower of leaves tumbled loose, bathing her legs in fiery light. The stag was a beautiful thing, a wondrous creature like as a god. And she would ride it. As if it were a simple beast, she would ride it.

Sif slid the sword back into its sheath. The stag watched in peace as she gathered her pack together again. She set her hand on his shoulder. His hair was like down, so light on her fingers. Muscle quivered under her palm. She hesitated just a moment, her hand on his side. Then Sif swung up onto his back.

He was broader set than any of the horses in Odin's stable; her feet stuck inelegantly out from his sides. Where to put her _hands_. She set them at the base of his neck, then thought of how very far she would have to go if she slipped off. Casting dignity aside, she looped her arms through his antlers and clasped the opposite roots.

"Ready?" asked the stag.

"Close enough," she said.

The stag stood, rising onto his feet as agilely as if he carried only air upon his back. Sif tensed. Her arms tightened. He shivered all down his back, muscles trembling, then he darted forward and leapt from the bough, and the wind tore through Sif's hair and leaves slapped her across her mouth and she screamed or laughed or merely wept, for they flew; they flew; down the trunk they raced like a cold wind bearing down from the north, and she could think of nothing but how her hair pulled, how the leaves crumbled in her mouth, and how she wished she'd a horse as fleet as this, for she never wanted to go anywhere again if she could not fly so swiftly as this stag.

She pulled herself forward and shouted into his ear, "What is your name?"

"I am Dvalinn," said the stag. His voice sang. "I am the autumn wind."

"I am Sif," she cried, then she hid her face in his throat for the wind froze her face.

"Hello," said Dvalinn gravely. "Hold on."

"Believe me," she said, "I am," then he rebounded off a branch, and she felt her legs beginning to rise. Sif wound her arms more tightly through his antlers and closed her eyes to the fog that dashed against them.




 

 _iv: the treetop._

Veðrfölnir dozed and as she did so, she dreamt uneasily of fire and smoke and hot winds buffeting her wings. War had lit in the heart of Múspellsheimr. Clouds of ash spitting out its great factories: she had caught a thermal and circled round them. The heat from the bellows so far below had warmed her beneath her feathers. Múspellsheimr had cut down its forests; it had cut out all it had to feed the fires. In her dream, Veðrfölnir circled and circled, her feathers fluttering in the smoke, and watched as they cut down Yggdrasill.

The eagle shifted. Veðrfölnir woke. A nebula had burst, spraying its guts in shoots of red, orange, a violent blue, across the dark sky. She thought it fire, cast from the heavens to consume Yggdrasill, then the eagle stirred again and said, "Wake up."

Veðrfölnir blinked. The fire resolved into stardust. The winds which ran fingers through Yggdrasill's high boughs were cool on her feathers. If fire burned, it burned elsewhere. Silly chick, to think Yggdrasill on fire because of a dream.

"Wake," said the eagle.

"I'm awake," Veðrfölnir snapped. She stretched her wings out and flapped, once. Kinks in her muscles popped loose. The eagle bore this patiently.

"Bad dreams?" she asked.

"That is none of your business," said Veðrfölnir. "My dreams are my own."

"You clawed my head," said the eagle.

Veðrfölnir busied herself with a loose feather in her right wing. The damned thing wouldn't come out. She bit at the root and said, "Sorry."

"I dream, too," said the eagle kindly.

She turned, looking out across the heavens. That distant spot, tucked behind a vast green cloud: that was Múspellsheimr, child of two stars. Veðrfölnir lowered her wing. The eagle shifted again, rolling from one side to the other as she repositioned in her nest. Veðrfölnir had never known the eagle to be so restless.

"War comes," said the eagle. "Yggdrasill knows it."

"Don't say it as though it's certain," said Veðrfölnir. Fear softened her bite. "Nothing is certain."

"War comes," the eagle repeated.

Fire, sent to devour Yggdrasill; fire, to burn her to her blessed roots, and the eagle burning with her. If war came to Yggdrasill, Veðrfölnir could fly; she could flee. The eagle, whose wings were as useless as Níðhöggr claimed, would remain.

"There must be something to be done," said Veðrfölnir. "Can we not stop them before they would find a way to cross the stars?"

"It is not for us," said the eagle.

Her head dipped. Veðrfölnir rode it out as best she could, wings splayed to brace. The eagle was silent for a time, staring through the cosmos at what only she might see in the farthest, coldest corners of the unborn universe.

She said: "We will watch."

"Oh, of course," said Veðrfölnir, "thank you for that. 'We will watch,' as if that isn't what we've done for the last several epochs." She snapped at the air. "What is the point of watching if we cannot do anything?"

"Someone must watch," said the eagle. "Someone must do."

"Bullshit," said Veðrfölnir.

The eagle did not deny it. Veðrfölnir hunched her shoulders against the chill. Now that she'd woken she could not easily go to sleep again, and if she were to be honest, as she liked to be honest and brutally so when she could manage it, she did not wish to sleep. The dream lurked; she saw its shadow in the corners of her eyes. She tucked her beak into her breast.

A familiar chittering started. A slender branch beneath them groaned then snapped into place again. Claws scrabbled over bark. Veðrfölnir squeezed her eyes shut so tightly she saw constellations. Oh, that she'd bit his head off when she first saw the little rat all those wretched millenia ago.

"And a good evening to you fine, feathered ladies," called Ratatoskr.

"To you as well, Ratatoskr," said the eagle gravely.

"Thank you kindly," he said sweetly to the eagle, then he shouted: "I said a good evening to you!"

"Fuck off," said Veðrfölnir.

Formalities concluded, Ratatoskr settled in. "You will never guess what I've come across."

He paused dramatically. Veðrfölnir refused on principle to guess. The eagle waited politely. Ratatoskr clicked his tongue and said, "No imagination in you two. _Someone_ has come through the door, a Sif of Asgard. She claims to have come in search of Loki—you know, the one who fell with the Bifröst."

The eagle stirred suddenly. She heaved forward, nearly rising out of her nest. "What are you doing!" cried Veðrfölnir, and she hung on desperately as the eagle bent her head to Ratatoskr.

"Out of Asgard," said the eagle. "Out of Asgard?"

"Er," said Ratatoskr. His tail twitched. His eyes had gone huge, his pupils blown; the eagle reflected in them. "Yes. She wanted to know where he'd landed, but I wouldn't know because no one bothers to tell me anything, which is—"

"Shut up and get on with it," said Veðrfölnir.

He bristled. "Here I am trying to—"

"Get on with it," said the eagle.

"Oh, of course, my lady," said Ratatoskr, rubbing his paws over his mouth as he bowed before her beak. "I directed her to Mímisbrunnr, that he might direct her to oh, what's this, please don't!"

The eagle had surged forward, leaning out of the nest. Ratatoskr squeaked and dove for shelter in the greenery about them. Veðrfölnir gave up her perch as lost and took flight, circling once widely as the eagle stared intently down the length of Yggdrasill, through the clouds and fogs and stars hung like bits of dew from her leaves.

"Veðrfölnir!" shouted the eagle.

She swooped down that the eagle might see her. "I am here."

"You must fly," the eagle said, "to the southern roots. She has gone astray. Níðhöggr stirs. _Fly_."

"I didn't tell her to go there," Ratatoskr said, indignant.

Whatever else he might have said Veðrfölnir did not hear, for she circled higher, orienting, and then, tucking her wings in, Veðrfölnir fell out of the sky.




 

 _v: the southern roots._

The stag slowed. The relentless dragging of the wind eased incrementally, till Sif felt it only as a breeze tugging at the ends of her hair. She lifted her head from Dvalinn's nape. The orange-burnt verdure so thick through his antlers scratched at her face. Leaning back from it, she looked about.

Gargantuan roots rose to either side; they gnarled about each other and drove recklessly on through the light fog which clung to Yggdrasill's lowlands. Dvalinn sprang down the length of one root. They passed beneath the arch of another, crossing over the first. The shadow stretched on, then they were out again and nearly level. She could not make out the earth, though she assumed it was there, somewhere below the clinging mist.

Sif unwound her arms. The joints had stiffened, locked in place. Her left elbow popped like a shot, and Dvalinn started.

"No," Sif rasped, "it's only me."

She licked her lips: they'd cracked. Blood had dried at the corners. Her canteen had broken off from her pack. Another three sat inside her pack, but until the stag had come to a stop, they were as good as useless. Sif turned her face to the fog, which engulfed them. Water dropped upon her skin, beading her throat, her cheeks. She opened her mouth to it.

Dvalinn slowed again, then he came to a stop. The root burrowed into the earth, a pillar planted in the fog. "Here," he said, and he bowed for her.

Sif slipped down from his shoulders. Her knees buckled, and she threw her hands against his shoulder. Her thighs pitched, muscles trembling. She grit her teeth and forced herself back from Dvalinn. Legs straight, still she felt as if they bent to the sides.

"Thank you," she said. She bobbed her head, the best bow she could offer him without falling off the root.

"Welcome," said Dvalinn. His legs twitched. His nostrils rounded. He looked spooked, as if he'd caught scent of something he would have preferred not to smell. The stag turned his eye on her.

"Be quick," he said.

Then he turned and sprang up the root. In a moment, he'd vanished through the fog. Sif squinted at the shadow 'til she knew it to be a thing she imagined. Blood dotted her lip. Speaking had cracked the scabs open. Water, first, then she'd move on. She shrugged out of her pack. The shield clanged on the root; the fog muffled the sound. Sif put her hand on it anyway, to keep it from ringing again.

She glanced over her shoulder. Fog. The suggestion of another root showed, hulking. If anything stirred, she could not hear it. That meant little, in a strange place with strange beasts—squirrels that changed size, a deer which ran fleet-footed and unheedful of the inexorable pull of gravity. She freed her sword and slung its strap round her shoulder.

The water canteens, she found buried beneath the rest of the oranges. She found her coat, too, and wished she'd thought of that before she'd frozen half to death. Sif shoved it back down and grabbed an orange and a canteen. She popped the cork with her teeth and drank deeply. If the water was stale on her tongue—the taste of the fog lingered oddly, like wine in the back of her throat—it was water.

Her legs shook, minute quivers running through them. If she sat, she didn't think she could stand up again. Dvalinn, with his eyes rolling back so the whites showed: he'd smelled something, here in the fog, down at the roots. Sif stuffed the orange into her pack, drew the strings tight, and hooked it over her shoulder. Dropping to a crouch, she swung out off the root.

Sif landed in mud, sloppy mud which squelched and burped up her knees. It smelled—what did it smell of? Rot, and something sweeter. Her legs threatened to give out. Sif tensed her thighs and forced her feet on. The mud clung to her heels, but after three steps, four steps, she strode more readily through it. She looked up to where she thought the trunk would be but she could see nothing but the fog and a distant light which might have been a sun.

Moss-side. Forward, she thought, and if it wasn't, far enough around and she'd find it again. When she found Loki, she was going to slap him across the face. He'd always had to make hide and seek into a trial. Absently, Sif adjusted her sword strap.

At her back: a sound like stones grating. A thick shadow swallowed her. Sif turned, fingers at the hilt, and the wyrm said, "Don't even bother. You can't stick me with that little thing."

In the belly of Godheimr, Sif had slain newly hatched wyrms. She had laid waste to the wyrms of the sunburnt lands, who spat fire and towered four heights above her, wyrms whose blood turned sand to glass. Thor had cut off the head of Eingeirr and brought it to Asgard, and she had marveled at the hugeness of the monster's head, how it stood twice again as tall as Thor, tallest in Asgard. The wyrm which bent to her now dwarfed Eingeirr as a mountain would her mother's house. It was long and sinuous, and the graceful arches of its throat belied the muscle which teemed beneath its plate. So long was it that the rest of it vanished into the fog, its back a great shadow and its tail nothing more than a faint whisper.

Sif drew her sword. The wyrm laughed. Its teeth flashed, a mess of razor edges set at cruel angles. Fangs jutted from its jaws. It leaned toward her, its mouth open. Swinging the pack from her shoulder, Sif yanked her shield free and slung the pack into its mouth. The wyrm caught the pack with its slithering tongue and swallowed.

"Such a waste," it said mournfully. "What was that meant to accomplish? Now you've lost everything you had."

"Not everything," she said.

She cast small, flickering looks about her, assessing what she could see of the terrain, the wyrm, where she was in relation to it all. A root dug into the earth at her back. A small, slanted hollow showed in the side of it.

"Oh," said the wyrm, "that's right. You still have your twig."

It laughed again. That had been the grating sound, of stones rolling against stones. The muscles thick in its throat worked. Larger opponent meant she needed to be quick. Best shot was to get under the hook in the root at her back and bring her shield up before her.

The wyrm wriggled closer. Its claws, each as thick around as Sif, bit deep into the mud. Its breath stank of rot and carrion and honeyed things. The eyes were the worst, for they spun in their sockets, and as they spun they hummed. So close, she could thrust her arm into a nostril up to her elbow.

  
In a sing-song murmur it said, "Here, since I'm so generous, I'll let you have a free shot. What do you say? Just one quick—"

Sif lashed it across the snout. Her blade screamed over the scales. A spark flew out and dashed in the mud. The wyrm began to laugh again. No gash, no cut, she hadn't even scratched its polish. Forty steps to the hollow. A claw twitched, and Sif brought her shield up to bash it hard on the nose once, twice, then she drove the end of her sword into its nose.

The wyrm shrieked at this and snapped back. Sif began moving to the hollow, running backwards on her heels. She kept the shield up. The wyrm shook its head. A bit of blood spattered out the end of its nose and guttered in the mud. Smoke poured out the divot the blood carved in the earth.

"That," said the wyrm, "was cheating."

It reared; its neck drew back; its head raised to the sky, and Sif thought: _Fuck, fuck, fire-breather, should've known from the throat—_ Its neck began to bulge, near to its chest. Didn't matter if she made it to the hollow; it would roast her wherever she stood. She had no ward to break the fire.

A ghastly scream cut through the fog. Briefly, Sif thought that was it; she was done for. She made to bring her sword up to bear. The wyrm paused. Its throat deflated and it said, "What—" then a shadow smashed into its head and drove it back into the mud. A wave of earth splattered Sif. She fell back and threw herself forward to keep balance. She looked to the wyrm.

It was a bird, an enormous hawk which had driven its claws into the wyrm's jaw. The bird swiveled its head sharply to look at her. Its beak opened—Sif had time enough to think of how badly she wanted to hit Loki and whether she could manage to score its mouth before it bit her head off—then the hawk screamed:

"Run, you fool!"

The wyrm stirred. Its claws dragged through the mud. The bird snapped its head back around.

"Look at you," the hawk jeered, "can't even stand up! I prefer to eat things with more substance but I suppose I could stomach a worm."

The wyrm hissed. "I've always been partial to canary myself."

"Continue straight and you'll find Mímisbrunnr," the hawk shouted at Sif. To the wyrm, it said, "Oh, please. If you even tried canary you'd choke on it."

So, she'd been right then, she thought; forward it was. Turning her sword over in her hand, she bolted for the far root. The fog closed around her. At her back, the wyrm swore tremendously at the hawk. A mad place for mad beasts. Her legs ached, worn out, but Sif did not slow; she did not falter; she did not stop.





	10. 8.

_i: mímisbrunnr._

The mud bled into clay. Sif stumbled, the change in the quality of the earth throwing her. Her leg jolted, and her knee locked then buckled. She fell forward onto her hand and pushed off. The tip of her sword dug into the clay. Shit. She looked back over her shoulder; the way was clear. The fog had dissipated some ways back, and she'd heard neither the hawk nor the wyrm since leaving them. Sif sheathed her sword. Her fingers shook. Her legs shook more. 

Going on as she had without rest wouldn't cut it for much longer. Practicality said she needed to find a hollow to lay down in until she'd got full control of her legs again. She sucked on her lip, which had split down the center. Practicality also said she needed to find water. Three full canteens lost. The roll wasn't a loss and she could make do for a week without food, but the water. Throwing the pack had been a stupid idea. It had bought her time, as she'd hoped it would, but—

Sif pinched her cheek between her thumb and her fingernail. Self-doubt would only slow her. She hadn't the time for it. Grimly, she trudged on. Her shield hung from her forearm; with every third step it bounced off her thigh. Forward. Forward. She would rest in a bit. Blood on her lip. She licked it away.

In the early days of her maturity she had walked the sunburnt lands, a young warrior, very young and very stupid, full of dreams of glory. Thor had gone with her. Loki, too. He'd pulled water out of the air when her canteen ran low, dew on his fingertips, rain in his palm. Her face had burnt with sun. Her arms peeled in long strips. She'd scratched at her nose, skin flaking, and said, "What—am I supposed to drink it from your hands?" as a joke.

Loki, who'd burned a deep, dark red like the afterglow of the sun as it set, had said, "Anything for you, my lady," and held his cupped hands up to her.

It was the heat in her skin, the memory of the sun lingering in her chest, that had made her pause. He had smiled at her over his hands, but the corners were all wrong, too tight and too jagged. She'd wondered what he would do if she bent her head to his hands. If she touched his wrists and tipped his fingers down and drank the water from his hands. If his skin would taste of salt.

The sun had set behind her. A wind kicked up along the horizon, throwing sand before it. Sif had turned and held her canteen out to Loki, and he had poured the water from his fingers into the bottle. The back of her neck had itched. Grit in her hair, too much sand on her skin.

The water had been cold on her tongue, marvelously chill all the way down her throat. His eyes had been green. More than that she remembered the smear of dirt on his chin, how his tongue had pressed to the inside of his lip. He'd licked the traces of water from his fingers, and she had turned her mind blank rather than think of what it was she wanted to do with his tongue and his fingers. She'd been hot and thirsty, and that was why she'd wanted.

"Lies," Sif muttered. Mortifying, how she'd lied to herself for so long. She passed beneath an arching lateral root.

A loamy soil replaced the clay. Grass spotted the earth sporadically and then with explosive fullness. The fog had thinned; now it vanished entirely. Sedge grasses peeked out of the greenery here and there. A colossal root rose before her, but a passage had been cut through it in the shape of an arch. Sif walked through.

She emerged in a meadow cradled in the broad juncture of two roots. The grasses, uncut, brushed the tops of her shins. An uncovered well stood at the heart of the meadow, equidistant from each root, and lounging in the grass beside it, a large naked man with a hooked nose lifted his head.

Sif cut through the grass to him. Stalks snapped beneath her feet. The man watched, curious, as she approached.

"Is this Mímisbrunnr?" she called.

"So it is," he said. "And I am Mímir, and this is my well."

She bowed her head quickly to him. He smiled as if amused and tipped his head to her.

"I am Sif Lieffsdottir of Asgard," she said. "I was told to speak with you of the three sisters, whose names—" She made a face. "I cannot remember. I need very badly to speak with them."

Mímir nodded thoughtfully. Then, his shoulders bunching, he sat up. His shadow spilled before him. Sif held her ground. He _was_ large, enormous even, of a size on par with the jötnar. A strange shadow gleamed in his eyes.

"I think first," he said, "you will tell me why you need speak with them."

Sif clamped her jaw. "This is a matter of great urgency. I don't have time to waste. I would have you tell me of how to find them so that I might go to them now."

"You have time enough, Sif Astrasdottir," said Mímir mildly.

She wondered that she had not noticed how cold the air in the meadow. She had not given him her mother's name. Mímir continued:

"If you would speak with the norns, you must drink of my well. To drink of my well, you must give me reason to permit it. So again I would ask that you tell me why you seek the sisters."

She could force him. Tall as he was, strong though his shoulders, she had slain taller and stronger. He, at least, would not spit fire upon her. But she could not do that. Would not do that. Sif forced her hands out flat at her sides. The shield pulled at her elbow.

"I seek Loki," she said. "I made a promise to him, that I would find him, but I know not where to look for him. The sisters know where he is, so I would speak with them."

Mímir pulled absently at the grass. A stalk shredded between his fingers. "And why do you seek Loki?"

She lifted her chin. Coldly she said, "I promised him I would. My word is my honor. I would not turn my back upon him."

"Allow me to rephrase," said Mímir. He stuck a bit of grass between his teeth. "Why did you promise Loki this thing you promised him?"

Her mouth was so very dry. It hurt to swallow. Sif pressed her bloodied lips together, then licked them again. The skin beneath her lips rasped; soon that would begin to peel.

Mímir worried the grass. He waited, his dark eyes steady on her. Annoyance struck in her belly: he knew, and he would have her say it anyway. Sif reddened.

"Because of my love for him," she snapped.

"As your brother," said Mímir.

"No," said Sif loudly, for the thought of Loki as her brother was absurd, "as a lover."

The word fell heavily from her tongue. Admitted, it could not be taken back. Nothing she hadn't known, still: it was one thing to love Loki and another thing entirely to say she would love him. Her ears burned.

Mímir smiled. Would that she could knock his teeth out.

"So, you love him," said Mímir, "as a lover loves a lover."

He goaded her. She stared fixedly at the well. Mímir spat the grass out and laughed.

"Well," he said. "The sisters will have much to say to you. If you are to drink from my well, and I see now that you are resolved to do so, there is a toll."

"There's always a toll," Sif muttered.

"Always," he agreed. "All things come with a price, and wisdom is no exception. My price is two-fold. First I would ask another question of you."

"And second?" she asked.

"A weight," he said. He extended his finger, gesturing. "The second finger of your right hand."

She snatched her hand back in a fist. "And why should I?"

"Odin gave his eye to drink from my well," said Mímir. Sif stared. He smiled; there was no warmth to it. "Heimdall gave his ear. I ask only a finger of you. That is the token I request. That is the proof of your intent. If you cannot give of your flesh, then I cannot give of the waters of Mímisbrunnr."

Sif touched the fingers of her right hand with the fingers of her left. She curled her hand about the middle finger, longest. The joints were delicate, fragile. She'd never thought of her hands as fragile before, not even as a girl when they were small, her fingers slender and soft. She looked to Mímir again.

"All right," she said. "But first you will ask your question."

He settled comfortably on his elbows. "You would seek Loki, out of your love for him. You know what it is he has done."

A prompt, but she would not rise to it. She knew. The Bifröst opened onto Jötunheimr, all its power turned upon that realm, and Loki the hand that would have slain the jötnar. She had wondered if she would have stopped him, if she would have thought it a sin. She had wondered if perhaps the monster was within and not without.

"So you know, too, the burden he must bear," said Mímir, "the burden of Loki World-killer, which is more than those he has killed will ever have. His judgment he carries. Knowing it, would you take his burden from him? Would you take his judgment for him?"

Loki. In her heart, she saw him alone on the throne, his shadow long against the wall. He had ever been alone.

"No," she said.

"You love him?" asked Mímir.

"I do," said Sif. She lowered her eyes. She said again, "I do. But his burden is not mine to bear, no more than my burdens are his to bear. My sins are my own."

"So you would not take it from him," said Mímir.

She shook her head. "No." She looked up then, and Mímir watched her, his face a thing of stone. "But I will help him with it," she said, "as I can."

"Give me your hand," said Mímir.

She knotted her fingers against her palm. Her knuckles ached. Deliberately she straightened her fingers, and Sif held her hand out to him. She held it steady, unwavering, and there was a dignity in that, she supposed. Then he closed his thick fingers around her second finger and tore it from her hand.

Sif turned her face away. The pain rolled up her arm; she thought she might vomit. She set her jaw against it. Spots bloodied her vision.

"Drink," said Mímir. He pressed a horn into her hand.

Her palm and fingers were slicked with blood, and it nearly slid from her. She closed her hand desperately about it and caught it with her left. Her head swam. Sif brought the horn to her lips and tipped it up. She drank greedily, quickly, and choked, but she held the horn up till she had drunk it all. Her thirst was such that she could have wept, but she'd no tears to give. The water was cool on her parched lips and sweet on her dried tongue. Blood from her hand stained the metal.

Sif lowered the horn. She licked her lips compulsively and swallowed again. The rasp in her throat had gone. So, too, had the pain in her right hand. She turned her hand over. The stump showed, the skin red, but the wound had closed and the bone hurt no more.

"A gift," said Mímir. "To spare you pain."

He took the horn from her. Sif stared up into his face. He was old, she saw now, older even than Odin, older perhaps than Asgard. She had thought him mocking, and he was that, but he was more, too.

"A word of advice," Mímir said to her, "and one I wish I had thought to give Odin. Wisdom itself is meaningless if you do not use it well."

"Odin's eye," she said. She touched the knuckle where her finger had been and flinched, for the skin was sore to the touch. "When did the Allfather—"

"If you seek the sisters," Mímir said, "go north. You will find them at Urðarbrunnr. They will have food for you and drink, but you will need neither until you have found them. Tell Urðr that Mímir has sent you."

"Thank you," said Sif, when he said nothing else.

"You are welcome," said Mímir. He smiled truly, and she did not wish to strike him for it. "Now go. Night will be on us soon."

Sif went.




 

_ii: loki dreaming._

The universe coalesced. Stars chased one another through the heavens; they left ghostly trails, like the aftermarks of the firecrackers Loki had stolen and set off years ago. The heavens shifted, swinging and then closing about him. His head swam. His gorge rose. Loki neither blinked nor turned away. He would see it, all of it. 

Between Yggdrasill's outstretched fingers, a spot of light showed. It grew phenomenally in a half-breath, until it was no longer a spot of light but a world pinched between her first and second fingers, a blue world spotted with black shadows and ringed by three moons. Jötunheimr, the fourth realm. A white blotch marred it: a vast, spinning storm which wandered sideways across the northern continent. It passed in a blink.

"What do you know of Jötunheimr?" asked Yggdrasill.

As a child, he had devoted himself to Asgard's great library and to the task of memorizing everything, firstly because he could and secondly because Thor could not. He'd thought Asgard's records on Jötunheimr sufficient, for what else need he know of the jötnar than that they were savages? The planet neared. The dark spots resolved into shapes: huge pocked squares rising out of the ice, like beehives. He knew very little.

"The oldest maps list it as 'The Uninhabitable Place,'" he said, "or 'The Dead Star.' When the first explorers from Asgard came to it and found it was both inhabited and not dead, they renamed it 'The Shrieking Land.'"

"And what did the jötnar call it?"

The maps had not said.

The hives grew in his perspective. Now he saw them as sprawling architecture cut into and out of the ice, covering huge swaths of land as in communal cities. Silver lights shone here and there through holes carved into the stone or ice. Shadows passed before them. Jötnar.

"What else do you know?" asked Yggdrasill.

They fell closer still to the surface, or the surface fell closer to them. The shadows expanded. In one window, a larger shadow bent to a small one. Loki stared at the place where the two shadows met, then they had passed it and the light was behind them. Yggdrasill waited.

"The explorers called the inhabitants the frostbitten men," he said, "first for the color of their skin and then for the corruptive quality inherent to their flesh, which—" He remembered this clearly, for it had stuck with him, the thought of becoming the monster. He recited the lines dully: "'In the touching, it turns the flesh of our own blue as theirs; and the flesh touched dies, for their touch is death. They are insensate as the dead for they feel nothing, and whosoever is touched by them shall be made insensate wheresoever touched.'"

"Is it true?" asked Yggdrasill, as if she did not know.

Loki touched the back of his left hand. His fingertips were chilled. Blood ran through his veins; he felt it stirring. In the juncture of his thumb and his first finger, a pulse beat.

"No," he said.

They settled on land. Ice crunched beneath his boots. His breath spilled out whitely before him, then a little less, then less than that. Yggdrasill walked. Loki followed.

"Why did the explorers come?"

"To seek out new lands," he said, "in the name of Asgard. For the good of Asgard."

It was a particular favorite phrase of his father's—of Odin's. He curled his tongue against it. Yggdrasill walked on before him. She was naked, but not naked, and the frost that showed on the undersides of her feet was like lace.

"Why did they return?"

His breath showed not at all now. His hand itched; he looked to it. A blue spot ate at his palm. He curled his fingers around it; he dug his nails into the edges to hold it there.

"To bring civilization," he said.

"Were the frostbitten men not civilized?" asked Yggdrasill, and she swung her arms out. Leaves fell like sleeves from her elbows, in thick, cascading waves, and they were silver leaves; they were white as snow laid upon the earth.

He turned to the stars. The first and third moons were half-full above. The second waned. A storm threatened to hide it from view. Ice bore down upon the blocked city outside which they stood.

"Not in the eyes of Asgard," said Loki.

"Come," said Yggdrasill.

He took her hand and she ran her free hand before them. The world shivered beneath her fingertips and ran as melting ice from her hand. Jötunheimr raced past them. Silver spires which shone with yellow lights whipped by, then a huge and residenced bridge which spanned an enormous chasm. A complex in the shape of spikes driven up through the earth approached. A pair of grand doors carved with three moons, one new, one half-full, the other full, came at them. They were at the palace; they were within the palace; doors melted before them and they were through.

The world stilled. Loki stared up at a door on which a carving of Jötunheimr showed in relief. Three lines at right angles connected the planet to the same new-half-full moon iconography of the palatial doors.

"Would you see her?" asked Yggdrasill.

"Who?" he asked, but he knew.

"Your mother," said Yggdrasill.

Frigg was on his tongue; her name pressed on his lips.

He turned again to the door.

"Show me," he said.

Yggdrasill set her hand to the door. The moons turned, the new to full, the full to new, and the half-moon switching sides. The door opened.

What had he expected? Memories of the war had lingered long after Odin's peace. In the library he had read accounts of jötnar eating the flesh of their young, and he had whispered them later under cover of dark to Thor, who had laughed and shouted at what had made Loki dread sleep.

She was tall and but for a dark cloth wound about her abdomen and thighs, naked. She'd hair, curling hair, black and shorn close to her scalp. The room was ornamented with items whose meaning he thought he knew—chairs, a high table, a length of ice polished as a mirror—but it was the bed, a nest set into the floor, on which she reclined. Laufey, naked, sat opposite her, and they looked together at a small thing set between them.

"He's very small," said the woman. Her voice was deep; it scratched.

Laufey laughed. "He will grow."

"No child has ever been so small."

"All children are small," said Laufey.

"Trust me when I say that our son is small," she growled.

Laufey held his hand to her for peace. Her mouth twisted; she grumbled. Then she set her hand on his. His fingers framed her wrist. She closed her hand about his wrist, the end of his palm. A string of red beads slung over his arm clattered.

Loki walked, without thought of walking, closer to the bed. Thick silver furs lined the depression. What lay between Laufey and the woman? He stared down at the child—an infant, newly born, only a tiny, wrinkled head sticking out of a cocoon of cloth.

As he watched, the woman—his mother—rested her other hand upon the baby's—Loki’s—chest. Her thumb stroked where his legs were bound.

"How will he survive when he is so small?" she said.

"Elngi is strong," said Laufey, "like Nál."

She smiled. A web stitched into her lip—a violet tattoo—pulled out, as string drawn tight.

"He shrieks like Laufey," said Nál, "all wind and no hail."

Laufey shook, his thick shoulders quivering. "He will hail in time."

"Elngi," said Nál to the babe, to Loki. She touched a fingertip to his cheek, all she could touch to it without hiding his face in her hand. "You will grow and be strong. One day you will lead us all to greatness."

"Enough," said Loki. He spun around on his heel. In the ice mirror he saw her face in profile, bent to the child. A smile wrinkled her cheek. "I've seen enough."

"Elngi," whispered Nál.

"No more!" he shouted. His lips drew back from his teeth. "Stop it now."

Yggdrasill lifted her hand. Jötunheimr winked out. The stars in the heavens twinkled, unnumbered, above, and Loki stood breathing heavily, his fingers curled as hooks, in the boughs of a summer-green tree.

He turned from Yggdrasill and covered his face with his hands. His fingernails dug into his brow. His palms when he looked at them were blue, darkly blue, the color of Laufey's skin and _Elngi_ 's skin and Nál's skin. If he cut the skin from his hands, it would only grow back.

His heart beat jaggedly in his chest. He closed his eyes. When he'd control again, he slicked his hair back from his brow. Loki looked to the spot in the sky where Asgard shone.

"What happened to her?"

"She is dead," said Yggdrasill gently. "Felled in battle. Perhaps it would be a comfort to know she died at the hand of Odin's strongest man, and only after she delivered a blow which, in turn, felled him."

"Not much of a comfort," he said.

"They burned her," said Yggdrasill, "in a great pyre on Jötunheimr. Odin did."

He turned, surprised. "So great an honor?"

"Not to the jötnar."

Yggdrasill looked to another point in the sky, which was Jötunheimr, he knew, from the way the stars were arranged about it.

She said, "The jötnar bury their dead in the northern ice, which is sacred to them as the sweet waters are sacred to the Aesir. In the eyes of Laufey, Odin's respect was defilement. A queen of the jötnar would not want for Valhalla."

He looked away. His hair had not stayed as he'd slicked it. Now it curled, wild as it had when he was a child. He thought of Sif, of her fingers wound in his hair, and he wanted to rest in the hollow of her throat. She is coming, he thought. Loneliness consumed him.

"There is one more thing I would show you," said Yggdrasill.




 

_iii: urðarbrunnr._

North, Mímir had said, and so Sif traveled north. As she walked, she pressed her thumb to the empty spot between her first and third fingers. The touch hurt, the skin still sensitive, but she would not leave it alone. Such a small thing to sacrifice. She'd her share of scars, and they were all of them testament to her courage, her struggles, the battles she'd won and the battles she'd survived. This was another thing: flesh given of her, not flesh taken from her. 

"Another scar," she said. That was all. Her lips had stopped bleeding, her legs their trembling. Fortunate, that she did not have to worry of a bleeding hand. The skin itched, new. Blood dried in the lines of her palm.

Sif walked on. The clouds neared again. Slowly, over time, the light began to dim, and Sif's shadow lengthened at her side. The tree, in its immensity, was such that it seemed as though she made no progress, and if it had not been for the way the sky darkened she would have thought perhaps she'd fallen to some enchantment; but it was only that the tree was so vast.

The grass thickened. Smaller trees grew in the shadow of Yggdrasill, and even as their branches arched over her head she thought them tiny, for in the shadow of Yggdrasill, how could they be anything else?

She scaled a tall root. The shield, strapped to her back, bit into her nape when she looked up to judge how far she'd left to climb. Sif slung her sword higher on her shoulder and dug her fingers into the bark.

When she'd got to the top, she slung her legs over and stopped, for below was another well, which was a deep spring lined only with reeds, and seated in the grass some distance away were three old, wizened women who worked with cloth.

"Jötnar," she whispered, for they were so: tall even as they hunched, with skin blue as the early night sky. Dark lines creased their hands. Jötnar. That Mímir had not mentioned this— But to Mímir, did it matter?

Sif slid the rest of the way down the root, and when she'd got close enough she leapt free of it. A twig snapped beneath her toe.

One of the women, the skinny one at the center, lifted her head. She'd no eyes, only folds of skin and the shiny marks of old scar tissue stretching to her temples. Her nose was bent near the top. She looked directly at Sif and said, "Sif's here. And about time. We've been waiting for you," she shouted at Sif. "Well! Stop dallying. If you want an invitation, you have it."

"I did not know I was expected," Sif said. She came forward.

The one in the middle snorted and sat back in her chair. She'd a handful of gossamer-thin strands and she wound these quickly about each other, spinning thread between her fingers. The woman to her left, which was Sif's right, had a loom, which she left off. The cloth spooling from it hung limply aross her lap.

"Oh, I've so wanted to meet you," she said eagerly. She, too, was eyeless. Her hair fell in a tangled cloud about her shoulders. "We've been expecting you for quite a long time, and we know, oh, so much about you. Practically everything there is to know, past, present—well, the future's a bit muddy, but I know some of that, too."

A scrap of something her mother had said to her when she was little came to her, then. Sif stared at them. Her hand ached suddenly, the bone where her finger had gone stinging as if struck.

"You're the fates," said Sif.

"And you're clever," said the one in the middle. "Do they tell stories of us, then? Even in Asgard? Never told you we were jötnar, did they. Can't have their good little babes knowing we were down here spinning."

"Don't mind Verðandi," said the one who'd spoken so excitedly to Sif. "Though she's right. I am Skuld, and this is Verðandi, and that's Urðr over there."

Sif followed Skuld's gesture. The third sister picked burrs from a mess of wool drawn out of a basket at her knee, and she did so with one eye turned down to her lap.

"She's eldest," Skuld went on, "and I'm youngest, but I know an awful lot, and I'm very good at weaving."

"Oh, push off," said Verðandi with disgust. "You think she cares about your weaving?"

"It's very beautiful," Sif said to Skuld.

Skuld smiled hugely and began to preen. "Beautiful, she says. Do you hear that, Verðandi? _Beautiful_."

"As if you can tell," said Verðandi, "when you haven't even got the eye."

"Can you hear how beautiful it is?" Skuld asked her earnestly. "Listen to the colors, Verðandi."

Siblings, thought Sif, and she was glad she'd none of her own. Drawing nearer to Urðr, she said, "Mímir has sent me to you, with regards to Urðr."

"With regards!" shrieked Skuld.

"Oh, I'm certain he did," said Verðandi, "with quite a few regards," and both she and Skuld began to laugh.

"That is enough," said Urðr, long-suffering, but her sisters only laughed the harder for it.

She turned her eye on Sif, and it was a blue eye, the iris set in a white sclera. Her other socket was empty and scarred, flesh sunken into the hole left. The back of Sif's neck prickled. Her hand ached more fiercely still. Urðr set her work down.

"We know why you have come," she said, and Sif believed her absolutely.

"We all do," said Skuld, giggling. Verðandi shushed her.

"You seek Loki, son of Frigg and of Odin," said Urðr, "who was Elngi, son of Nál and Laufey, who has no mother and no father and no home."

"He has a home," said Sif.

Urðr smiled at this, a little dry flickering of her lips. "If you will sit with us and listen, we will tell you where to find him."

"But there is a price," said Skuld.

Sif could not help it; she rolled her eyes. "Why is there _always_ a price?"

"Because that's the way of it," said Verðandi. "If you don't like it, you can leave."

"Don't say that," Skuld hissed. "You know what we lose—"

"Is it a finger you want?" Sif asked. She looked to Urðr, who stared unblinking back at her. "I've seven left, and my thumbs, too. Or would you like one of my toes?"

"Just your hair," said Urðr lightly. She reached for Sif. Sif stiffened, but Urðr only touched her hair where she'd tied it near to her crown. "From here out." She drew her hand back. A chill ran over Sif's jaw.

"What use is my hair to you?"

"Hair has many uses," said Urðr. She picked her wool up again. "We clean it and spin it and weave it."

"I found the scissors," Skuld called. "Verðandi was sitting on them."

"I was _not_ ," said Verðandi.

What was hair to a finger? Skuld passed the scissors to Verðandi who passed them on to Urðr, whose fingers, though gnarled with age, worked with grace. Urðr turned, setting the wool back into the basket. The scissors gleamed against her thigh. Sif looked round the half-circle, at the jötnar sisters. Her sword pressed into her shoulder as she knelt.

Sif bent her head to Urðr.

Urðr's hand was light at the base of her skull, there to steady. Sif rolled her lips in to her teeth. The scissors slid through her hair in fractions, sawing through the tie. A length of hair fell limp against her nape and then another, and another. Urðr caught them all. The scissors clicked, metal on metal, and Urðr drew Sif's hair from her shoulders, hooked between finger and thumb.

Wisps of hair tickled the back of Sif's neck. She was bare, her head light, and looking up to Urðr, who smiled down upon her, the ease with which she lifted her head made her dizzy and uncertain. A halo of sunlight glimmered in Urðr's black hair, which hung straight down her back as Sif's had hung down hers. Now her hair lay flat across Urðr's lap, black hair spotted in places with flecks of leaf or dried mud.

"Is it strange?" asked Skuld softly. "You must feel so naked."

"Don't say that," said Verðandi. "How will that help? You'll only make her feel poorly."

Sif touched her nape. Little scraps of hair stuck to her fingers. The strangeness of it—her bared neck, the absence of pressure where she'd no finger—was near dreamlike; then she was only Sif again, kneeling in the grass. She turned, smiling, to Skuld, then she caught herself.

"A bit strange," she said, "but I think I shall learn to live with it."

Skuld smiled at her. The lines in her face folded up: they were smile lines, mostly, and laugh lines, too.

"We learn to live with a lot of things," she said to Sif, but it was Verðandi who snorted and said, "More than we should."

"Sometimes," said Urðr. "There's food in the basket at Verðandi's back. You may help yourself to it and to the spring."

Sif rose from her knees. Grass stains showed green on her trousers. White mud speckled the grass at Urðr's feet, which were naked, her toes long and knobbed as Sif's mother's toes were long and knobbed. A silver ring decorated the littlest toe on the left.

"Don't worry about eating too much," Skuld called. "Verðandi fits, but the basket never empties. You can eat all you like."

"Fits," grumbled Verðandi. "And who is it who holds onto the eye past her turn?" She tucked her finger between the strands and bent to draw the basket out from behind her.

Bread and cheese, but Sif had lived off less, and the bread was soft and the cheese pungent. Her mouth, so recently dry, watered; her tongue ran slick. She jabbed a hole in her bit of bread and stuffed a piece of cheese in it. Putting it to her lips, she hesitated. She looked up to the sisters—to Verðandi, whose mouth was lined with frowns and whose cheekbones showed severely. How Loki would tease her for her rudeness: _And where are your manners, my dear lady Sif?_

"Thank you," Sif said. "For the food and for your kind welcome."

"And why wouldn't we welcome you?" asked Verðandi, acerbic. She twisted the strands tightly together. "But you _are_ welcome, so eat."

Sif bowed her head and ate. The bread and cheese melted together on her tongue, and her chest was heavy for it. At her left, Urðr worked, pulling the dirt and fluff out of Sif's shorn hair. She had watched Frigg work thusly before, cleaning wool and cotton of burrs and tangles with a warrior's ease with a shield, and her mother before that. The soft whisk-whisk of the loom started up beneath Skuld's hands. The sound of it soothed Sif, as it had soothed her when she was a child.

There was something about that eye. Not only that it was blue, dropped in white, but the way it looked. She'd seen it before. Mímir had said, "Odin gave his eye to drink from my well. Heimdall gave his ear."

Sif lowered her sandwich and looked to Urðr. Urðr's eye was on her hands as she brushed the length of hair.

"Odin's eye," said Sif.

Urðr did not look up. Sif's hair shone in Urðr's hands as it had never shone, like a metal buffed to shine. Verðandi and Skuld worked quietly.

"Our eye now," said Urðr. She smoothed Sif's hair beneath her hand. "He took our eyes from us before he locked us down here, that we might not see."

The scars at their eyes, the bends in their noses. The bread in Sif's belly was a stone. He had cut them, smashed them so their eyes popped and their noses broke.

"We are powerful seers," Verðandi broke in. She held her hand out to Urðr, who passed Sif's hair to her in waves. "Even as children, we saw more than Odin liked. He could not allow Jötunheimr so dangerous a weapon as three girls with good eyes."

"We saw everything," said Skuld. She smiled reassuringly at Sif. "But we got the better of him in the end. Mímir gave us his eye."

"Because of his great love for Urðr," said Verðandi slyly.

"Oh, shush," said Urðr, but she did not deny it. She looked very comfortable with it.

"How old were you?" Sif asked. _Even as children_.

"I was a babe," said Skuld. She didn't seem very bothered by it. "Verðandi could speak, and she says she swore terrifically at him."

"Because I did," said Verðandi as she twisted Sif's hair into a long, shining thread. "I laid a terrible curse on his feet. That's why he has such warts on his toes."

"Does he have warts on his toes?" asked Skuld.

"I've never seen his feet," said Sif. Her voice was too loud in her ears.

She could not stop thinking of it, of the Allfather cutting the eyes from children. From a babe. Even a jötunn babe, she thought; but there was no 'even' to it. A babe. She glanced at Skuld, who was quite cheerfully old, older than anyone else Sif had ever seen but for Verðandi, who was older still, and Urðr, who was oldest.

"How long have you been here?" she asked of them, for she had to know. Locked away in the roots of Yggdrasill, children blinded by a king.

"Always," said Urðr. "Time works strangely here in the shadow of Yggdrasill. By your understanding, we've only been here a few millennia, since the third war. By ours, we have been here since the beginning of time."

"So long," said Sif.

"It isn't so bad as all that," said Skuld. "We have each other."

"Would that we didn't have you," grumbled Verðandi, but she smiled at her fingers as they spun.

"How could he do it?" Sif asked. Anger had sparked inside her. "How could the Allfather possibly have hurt children, for, for—"

"For the good of Asgard," said Urðr. She stared at Sif, and Odin's eye stared at her. "That was what he thought."

"Even so," Sif said hotly. "He is of Asgard; he is our king. He would not ever—"

"Steal a babe from a temple?" asked Urðr. "Cast out his son for being what he made of him? Held his love as ransom? Odin is king, but he is mortal, too. He sins as all sin."

"Múspellsheimr girds for war," said Skuld dreamily. She picked at the threads on her loom, sliding them free. "Vessels in a shipyard, bent for the stars. Asgard burning. War again."

Sif rounded on her. "Múspellsheimr would never turn on us!"

"Because you would not let them," said Urðr. "Múspellsheimr offered no threat but the Allfather still extended his dominion over them."

"We gave them protection," said Sif, "as we gave protection to all the realms. We guard them from their enemies."

"You guard them from you," said Verðandi shortly. She fed the thread to Skuld, who fed it to her loom.

"For the good of Asgard," Sif shouted. "Always, for the good of Asgard."

"And what of Múspellsheimr?" asked Urðr.

Sif turned to her. Urðr gazed steadily at her.

"What of Jötunheimr?" she asked Sif. "What of Elngi, son of Laufey? Is Asgard more than them?"

"We gave them protection," said Sif, but her heart had gone out. She remembered, oddly, her father grabbing her by the arm and dragging her from war games with the neighborhood children. "For your own good," he'd shouted as she cried. "No daughter of mine will play at swords."

Skuld's loom started up again. She wove Sif's hair lightly, and like a spiderweb strung with dew, she began to shape it.

"So," said Urðr. "War begets war. Cruelty begets cruelty. For the good of one, the ill of the other."

The bread had broken apart in Sif's hand, the cheese smushed. She ate it without thought; a warrior could never afford to overlook a meal. The cheese stung her tongue. She swallowed, and her throat was dry. Sif rose and went to the well.

In the water, her reflection stared up at her: a fierce woman with short hair and hazel eyes. A woman of Asgard. A warrior of Asgard, the worthy daughter. The question came to her again: if the decision had been hers to make, would she have sacrificed the Bifröst for Jötunheimr? She heard the Allfather speaking: "For the good of Asgard." And what was the good of Asgard? War came again.

She touched the ragged ends of her hair and wanted for Loki.

After a time, Skuld said, "There. It's done. Sif!"

Sif looked up from the well. Skuld shook out a length of cloth, which shimmered and shone as well-polished brass. How she'd woven it in so short a period, Sif didn't know, then she started, for that was her hair. She had not had so much, she knew.

"It's for you," said Skuld, beaming.

"For me!" said Sif, for the hair had been her toll.

Skuld laughed. "If you're to face Níðhöggr again, you'll need better armor." She shook the cloth again. "Whatever your hair covers cannot be harmed, by fang or claw or fire."

Níðhöggr. The great wyrm, that monstrous mountain which lurked in the fog.

"But I've given you nothing for this," said Sif.

"Not yet," said Skuld, smiling, "but you will. War comes, but it does not need to."

"And how can we stop it?" Sif demanded. She threw her arm out, encompassing the clearing, the well, the root beside it, the whole of the world beyond. "The Bifröst is broken. The way is gone. Without the bridge, how can anyone stop them?"

Urðr spoke: "There are other ways between the realms. Loki knows of them. You have walked one."

Skuld leaned forward, the cloth bunched in her hands, spilled across her lap. "You can bring peace, Sif," she said. "You can stop the war before it comes to burn us all. You and Loki. Together."

"And if you don't," said Verðandi brightly, "we all die horribly, crushed beneath the weight of Yggdrasill's corpse."

"Yes, thank you, Verðandi," said Urðr. She looked to Sif. "Will you take the mail we have made for you?"

In the fog, the wyrm waited for her. In the sky, Múspellsheimr burned with war. Between, somewhere: Loki, son of Odin. Elngi, son of Laufey. In her dreams she had seen fire at his back, in the face of the destroyer and in the burning of a tree.

"I will take it," said Sif.

Skuld rose and brought the cloth to Sif, and shucking shield and sword, Sif dressed in it as if it were truly armor and not simply a cloth spun out of her hair. It felt as armor would beneath her fingers, a fine mail that held even as she dragged covertly at the weaving.

"It won't tear," Skuld whispered.

Embarrassed—shamed for doubting—Sif finished fitting it to her thighs. The cloth covered her shoulders, her arms, her chest and back; it fell in a skirt to the tops of her shins. How Skuld had shaped it, she wished she knew, and she thought perhaps the sisters bore more magic than sight.

"It's well made," she said to Skuld. "Thank you for it."

Skuld smiled. The scar tissue at the corners of her eyes wrinkled.

Verðandi shifted, impatient, and said, "Give me your hand, if you want to know where Loki can be found."

Sif straightened, sword in hand, and slung the strap over her shoulder. She gave her left hand to Verðandi, who clasped her wrist. Too late she remembered frostbite; but Verðandi's fingers did not burn her. A blue light bore into Sif's skin, then her wrist flashed yellow, as if draped in gold. Verðandi dropped Sif's hand.

"Your other hand," she snapped. "That one's already got a charm in it."

So Sif gave her right hand to Verðandi, who said, "Ah. That's what he took." Then the blue light drove into Sif's right wrist, and for a moment she saw four fingers and her thumb. But it was a phantom, and it faded. Sif's hand felt cold, chilled through.

"This charm will lead you to him," said Verðandi. She held Sif's hand still. "Follow it truly and you will find Loki. Once you have started, you cannot stop. Do not turn back. Do not go astray."

"I won't," said Sif.

Verðandi clutched Sif's hand a moment longer; then she released her. "Good," she said, and it was done.

"Then I'm afraid it's time for you to go," said Skuld.

"Remember what we have told you," said Urðr.

She watched Sif with Odin's eye, but it was her eye and her sister's eye and her other sister's eye. Odin had no claim to it.

Sif looked to the three sisters, Urðr and Verðandi and Skuld. She bowed to them.

"I will not forget," she said. "Thank you."

"Don't thank us," said Verðandi. "You still have to prove yourself."

"She will," said Skuld.

"I will try," said Sif.

Her hand, chilled, ached to go. Sif left Urðarbrunnr, where the fates spun, and followed the call as it led her from the well to the west, from the north into a growing fog where shadows waited and Loki, too.




 

_iv: loki dreaming._

Jötunheimr burned. Fire devoured the whole of it. In the distance, a spire cracked, the ice weakened in the conflagration; it fell into a burning canyon. An ice storm drove against the fire's flank for naught. Everywhere was fire, and in fire, death. 

"How?"

He turned to Yggdrasill. Light flickered hotly across her face. In her hair, which had turned red as autumn, ash gathered. Her eyes glittered like coals.

"Múspellsheimr," she said. "Other worlds will burn, too. Asgard will burn."

He flicked his fingers impatiently against his thigh.

"Múspellsheimr would never. They are loyal to Asgard."

"Or did Asgard cut loyalty out of them?" she asked. "Múspellsheimr gave Asgard peace, but that was not enough for Odin. He set his law upon them."

"He brought order," said Loki, then he bit down on the inside of his lip. What did he owe Odin? He felt the weight of his father's hand on his shoulder.

"He sowed war," said Yggdrasill.

The great ice shelf began to crumble. In stages, in waves, it broke and tumbled, shattering as flame licked up through the cracks.

"How could they do this?" he asked. "With the Bifröst lost, they have no means of traveling to any other worlds."

"You of all my children should know," said Yggdrasill, the world-tree, whose branches contained many paths. "There are more ways than one. When the Bifröst broke, Asgard lost its power over Múspellsheimr. Múspellsheimr would make Asgard know its power."

She looked, sadly, across Jötunheimr as it died in the heart of the fire, burned out from within. Loki's skin ached with the heat. The light stung his eyes.

She said, "They will find a way. When they do, the sons of Múspellsheimr will set fire to the cosmos. All the worlds in all the universes will die."

"Then stop it," he said. "Can you not block the ways?"

"Loki," said Yggdrasill, "I will die first," and in the light thrown up by the devouring flames, she was strewn with ash.

He was brittle with fire. His mouth was dry, his hands, his lips, his eyes.

"Then what hope is there for any of us?"

Yggdrasill smiled. "What did your mother tell you?"

Frigg, laying her hand on his, had said, "There is always hope."

He gestured helplessly to the gutted remains of Jötunheimr. "But what can be done to stop this? To stop any of this? If the course is already set and even you cannot change it, then what hope does anyone else have?"

"There are more ways than one," said Yggdrasill. "Sif comes. You know the way. In time."

"No more riddles," he snapped. Smoke blew through his hair; it caught in his teeth. "Tell me directly."

"Together," said Yggdrasill, and in her, he saw Frigg. "There is always hope. You must remember that. There is always another way."

He stared at her. The thought was absurd. He started to laugh and choked on it.

"So I am to save the universe," he said. "Is that what you mean? I am your chosen hero. Loki World-killer."

The laugh strangled him. He covered his mouth and hid his face in the fire again. His hair stirred, thrown in disarray by the thickening smoke.

"Not precisely," said Yggdrasill. "You are one champion. The other is Sif."

Sif.

Yggdrasill touched his shoulder. He bowed his head. The smoke had got in his eyes.

"Without you, she will not know the way," said Yggdrasill. "Without her, you cannot bring peace. But the two of you together. Perhaps there is hope."

He stared into the flames, into the crumbling heart of Jötunheimr. His eyes stung, wet.

"But will she come?" he asked of the fire.

"You know if she will," said Yggdrasill.

"I'm afraid I've lost faith," he said.

"Not in everything," said Yggdrasill, "or you would not dream."

He lifted his head from the fire. His skin was too hot, burned. He felt melted and bruised and pulled apart, all over again. Who would come for Loki?

"She comes," said Loki.

"She comes," Yggdrasill agreed.




 

_v: hvergelmir._

What was it her mother had said to her? "In the roots of the tree, three witches spin." They'd been there always, Urðr had told her, but Odin had set them there. A self-fulfilling prophecy, Sif supposed: if the sisters had to be there, then they had to be there. Destiny. What a horrid thought. If Sif sought Loki, she did so of her own volition. 

She stalked on through the fogged land which stretched between Yggdrasill's roots. Mist clogged her nose. Shadows leered in places where shrubs and small, broken-looking trees grew doggedly close to Yggdrasill. How there was light enough for them to grow, she didn't know, but it was there; light fell in patches from Yggdrasill's leafy boughs.

A little pressure bit Sif's thumb, as though someone pinched the joint knuckle and led her by hand. She worried her third finger with her first; the absence of the second stuck out.

_If you're to face Níðhöggr again._

To prepare for a possibility was one thing; an eventuality was another thing entirely. Skuld had sounded certain of it. Urðr had been the one to ask for her hair, and all three sisters had worked it till Skuld had handed her the mesh woven from Sif's cut hair. If the fates said a thing would come, it would come. Sif ground her teeth.

As she walked, she drew her sword from its sheath. The weight was off in her hand, the loss of a finger a fractional imbalance. A fraction could throw everything off, she knew. She swung the sword experimentally, rolling the hilt so it balanced on one finger then the next. The hilt struck high on her third finger and fell away from her hand; she plucked the blade out of the air.

Again. Again, until she got it right. She swung the sword twice and rolled it.

She'd said to Loki that they all made their own choices. If destiny existed, how could it be anything but the culmination of choice? Loki had chosen to send the Destroyer after Thor. He had chosen to open the Bifröst to Jötunheimr. The hilt landed poorly on her little finger, but she held it. Sif had chosen to leave Asgard to look for Thor. Sif had chosen to leave again to look for Loki, knowing this second time she might not return. They had both of them, Sif and Loki alike, chosen to put their hearts aside and feign indifference where none existed.

Choices. She had chosen as a girl to ignore her father as he shouted at her of her own good. Her mother had chosen to help her. The princes had chosen to accept her as friend. The queen had chosen to extend patronage to Sif. She had chosen to train in war, to fight, to learn and understand the science of the sword, the glaive, the lance, the shield. Perhaps in the end, Sif had chosen to love Loki. Perhaps it was only that she'd chosen to allow herself to love him. There was always a choice.

But.

She practiced striking, lunging out on one foot and then spinning with her sword held diagonal before her chest, whipping it out as she stopped on her heel. The balance was still off, just a bit. She stepped again, cutting through the fog as she advanced.

_But._

The choices of others affected her choices. Was that destiny? If Odin had told Loki truly of his birth when he was young, would he still have tried to kill Jötunheimr? If, when they were in the sunburnt lands and the sun was hot in Sif's throat, Loki had looked at her with the sand in her hair and the burn on her face and said, "I love you and I want to kiss your throat," would Sif have dashed the water from his hands and kissed him? Would she have laughed, too frightened of the hugeness of her own heart, and acted as if it were a joke? If her father had said, "Whatever you wish, I will support," instead of, "No, no, I refuse this, and you will put that down," would she have spurned the queen's offer? Would the queen have offered?

And the question welled up in the part of her mind which dreamed of fire and smoke: if she had spoken to Loki through the Destroyer, would he have called it off?

We are all responsible for ourselves, she thought viciously as she sliced through the fog. It remained, that Loki had done what he had done. It remained, that Sif had done what she had done. Whether the future was a question or a statement, the past was bound; it could not be changed.

She twirled her sword and rested the tip on her shoulder. The tugging on her thumb dragged her left around the tapering end of a root. The anger bled out of her, viscous liquid from a wound.

The past had not changed. Her understanding of it had changed. It remained, same as before, and the consequences, too, remained, but what had been simple before was no longer.

Had it ever been simple? She had thought it so only because she had known so little. Matters had been simple between her and Loki when they were children only so long as she hadn't known how to qualify or quantify her feelings for him. Ignorance made it seem simple when it had never been so.

The trees growing in the shade and strange sunlight of Yggdrasill thickened. The fog cleared some then closed about her again. Sif balanced her sword in her palm. The knuckle where her second finger had gone chafed, the skin rubbed raw. Absently, she listened for sound, but there was no sound in the fog but for her footsteps, which were soft, and her breathing, which was steady.

Self-awareness was a heavy thing. Sif knew who she was but she thought— She presumed— She suspected she had known so well that she had never questioned anything, not in the way she should have questioned it.

She ran her free hand over her hair. The shortness of it, the rasp of the ends on her palm, startled her. She'd never worn her hair so short, not even as a child. Her father had forbidden it, then it had been a sort of taunt to her father and those like him who would say what was and was not appropriate for a maiden and a challenge to those who would fight her, a means of saying "look how good I am, that I don't care if you can grab my hair."

She dropped her hand. The trees, crowding each other, had formed a thicket. Sif pushed through it, mindful of thorns and springy branches. A mist roiled over her feet. A slender branch, brushed too quickly, whipped back at her; the mesh repelled it. Sif felt only a tap. Would that the armor covered her shins, too.

Shoving out the other end of the thicket, she came to a stop at the lip of a great, bubbling spring. The water popped. An iridescent bubble peeled off it and rose higher, higher, then splattered coolly on her finger when she touched it. She crouched and held her hand over the water, testing the air. It _was_ cold. Her reflection wobbled over the surface. Tiny glimmering fish darted through the pool; she wondered that they could. Laying her sword across her knees, she dipped her fingers into the water. A powerful shiver ran up her arm. She shook drops from her hand and, lifting her sword again, stood. How did it boil?

Her thumb pulled, urging her to cross. The spring was wide, laid over with that same near omnipresent fog. She could make out a smudge where the other shore must be, but that was only a suggestion. Just as easily it could be an island or a root which had gone to rest in the mud. The water wasn't too deep, rising halfway to her shin at the shore. If it deepened, she would have to swim. Sif weighed her sword and her choices.

Verðandi, in memory, spoke: "Once you have started, you cannot stop. Do not turn back. Do not go astray."

Sif sheathed the sword and stepped into the water. If Thor had punched her in her shins, once each, she thought that might have done it. The shock ran up into her knees. She'd swum in the cold springs of Asgard, but even in winter they couldn't compare to the force of this cold, the bone-freezing strength of it. Sif took another step and another. The water rose a half inch, lapping higher on her shins, and it began to pour into her boots. Her toes numbed.

A light current rolling along the bed of the spring dragged at her. The water was going somewhere, pulled down into the earth. Sif forced her feet on. Her teeth shook; she clenched her jaw. The pressure on her thumb remained. _Once you have started._ All the stars, she hoped that was the far shore before her.

Deep in the fog, which bank hid all but the faintest implication of Yggdrasill, a grinding started like stones rolled together in a hand.

"Here you've come again," said the wyrm, "when you should've run."

Sif grabbed for her sword; her fingers brushed the hilt. Then Níðhöggr spilled out of the fog, which scattered in his wake, and the spring burst about her. She staggered and tumbled, rocked back. Water filled her nose and dragged her over the stony bed. Sif scrambled for a grip, rolled over onto her front, and leveraged out of the water. Her face stung with cold; her fingers trembled with it.

Níðhöggr loomed, titanic and terrible, before her. The fog gathered slowly again at his back. In the clear places she saw: knots torn out of Yggdrasill, the roots ravaged and bloodied, oozing sap from deep, rending cracks.

Then he stepped forward, and the water surged again, rising nearer to her knees. Sif whipped her sword from its sheath. Her fingers hooked about the hilt. She reached back for her shield.

The wyrm's eyes spun and spun, like insects in a jar. "Oh, please," he rumbled, "as if such a tender maiden as you could ever hurt so innocent a beast.

"You are no innocent," she said, though her jaw ached, "and I am no maiden."

"Semantics," said Níðhöggr. "Nevertheless. You cannot hurt me. Your sword is useless on my hide. Have you forgot already?"

And he darted for her. Sif took a step back and threw her shield up. His teeth hooked over the shield, snaggled shark's teeth reaching for her face. Bearing the shield with her arm and fighting to hold her ground, Sif flapped her hand at her throat. She caught the mesh hood and dragged it over her head. A tooth slammed into her head and rebounded.

Níðhöggr withdrew. His long, serpentine neck coiled.

"What's this?" he murmured. He gleamed, red as blood, water dripping from his scales. "Has the turtle found her shell? Wherever did you find such a thing?"

Sif put her weight forward on her toes and launched beneath his snout. She brought her sword up, scouring it across the underside of his throat, a place where wyrms were often poorly guarded. The edge skittered off scales. Fuck, she thought.

Casually, Níðhöggr hooked a claw around her leg and flicked her across the water. Sif landed hard in the shallows of what had been the far shore after all. Her ankle twinged. Níðhöggr sauntered toward her, thick ripples wandering out from his muscled legs. Sif gathered her weight and rose again, and though her ankle protested, it held. A sprain. Her sword lay glittering in the water by her foot.

"You may as well surrender now," said Níðhöggr as she scooped her blade up. "I'm going to eat you sooner or later, and it would save us both on time if you just gave it up."

"I will never surrender," she declared, "not to anyone or anything."

His tongue flickered out. Níðhöggr cocked his head, a fluid gesture which twisted his neck.

"Ahhhh," he said. "You're Loki's champion. You would bring the World-killer out of the dreaming muck, and slay me!"

"You are nothing alike," she snapped. "Loki is—"

"A serpent in the house of Odin," whispered Níðhöggr. His eyes glowed, huge as lanterns. "A snake slithering in your throat. Bespelled by the wicked Loki."

She could not think but for Loki, Loki with his dark hair, his careful eyes, glowing, spinning, yellow as the sun. The sun, she thought. Hot breath blew across her face. Her hair, clipped short, fluttered against her brow, and Sif brought her shield up against Níðhöggr's snout.

He pulled back. "Oh, that should've worked. You're more clear-headed than the last few I've ate."

"I won't fall for your deceits," she said clearly, though her tongue was slow with cold.

"What deceit is there in it?" he wondered. "Loki would have swallowed Jötunheimr. I would swallow Yggdrasill. We are of a kind, he and I, both of us wyrms twisting in the roots. He would tear down one house. I would tear them all down."

"Loki," she said, and his name swelled in her throat, "is no monster. He is not a demon or a beast; he is _Loki._ "

"And I am Níðhöggr," said the wyrm impatiently. "Name a thing what you would. That does not change its nature."

"And what is your nature?" she demanded. "To lie?"

"What is Loki's nature if not the same?" he murmured, then Níðhöggr snapped at her again.

She fell into a roll and emerged, gasping, from the water. Her hood slid; she dragged it up again. Her fingers had loosened about the hilt, weak with cold, and she tightened them again till the bones hurt with it.

"Quick," Níðhöggr laughed. "I would have your answer before I snatch you up."

Her chest struggled against the chill. Even under the protective mesh she was wet, and she shivered throughout. She held her shield between herself and Níðhöggr as he paced about her.

"Loki lies," she said, "and he tricks and he play games, but he has never been false."

"Yet you say he lies. How is that not false?"

"You would make a simple thing of something which is not," she countered. "He lies, and he says things to wound, but he is brave, too. And he is true." Her brow knitted. "Even his lies are true, when you understand him."

"How very clear," drawled the wyrm. "And what else? What else is there?"

Sif rolled her thumb over the hilt of her sword. The weight of the blade was off, only a hair. She wished she'd her finger; then she thought of Loki, lost, and she said, "And I love him."

"Abide my wretching," said Níðhöggr.

He circled her, always circled, waiting for her to weaken, for her hood to fall again, for the cold to get her. Why he didn't just push her down and swallow her _whole_ —unless, of course, his mouth wasn't so wide. She kept her shield up and mirrored him, circling so she always faced him. Those eyes spun and spun, buzzing in the sockets. She focused instead on the end of his nose.

Couldn't get through his scales. She'd cut him before—how? Jammed her sword up his nose. Blood pouring out his snout, burning a divot in the earth as he blew it from his nostril. Inside, under his scales: that's what she had to get to, the places where he hadn't anything to stop her sword.

Oh, easy, she thought fiercely at herself. I'll just ask him to open wide. Then she thought: oh, no. That is _stupid_.

"So," said Níðhöggr at last, "what are you thinking? Shall we dance until night falls and your legs give out?"

"We could do that," said Sif. "Or."

His neck unfurled slightly. His teeth showed.

"Or?"

"I bet you can't take me whole," she said. She smiled, teeth bared. "You'd have to do two bites, wouldn't you? That's what's got you so furious."

"'Furious' is such an overstatement," said Níðhöggr, but she'd got his attention.

Sif threw her shield aside. She strode for him, her arms at her side, and said, mocking, "Come on, then. Give it a try. Unless you think you can't manage it."

He'd gone terribly still, all but for his eyes. The muscles in his throat tensed. Fire organ, low and in the front. That was what bulged.

"If you insist," he hissed, then his jaw unhinged and he barreled for her.

Sif held her eyes open and her arms down though everything in her said: _fight, fight, run_ —

The world darkened. The upper and lower halves of his jaw drove into the spring on either side of her. Water rushed up her knees. That long, snake's tongue shifted, undulating to wrap about her. Sif grabbed at it with her left hand and slammed her boots into the strip of muscle. His teeth snapped shut. Darkness engulfed her, and Sif began urgently to climb.

The tongue rolled under her foot, propelling her toward his throat. The incline started to level. Sif jabbed a leg out, catching it on the roof of his mouth. She moved quickly, awkwardly, shifting so she slid feet first into the contracting ring of muscle. It clamped about her knees. The mesh had rucked up on the left side, and her left knee popped; she hoped desperately it was only a dislocation. Then the rest of her passed through into the throat, and her sword was pushed hard against her chest.

Her left knee pulsed hot with pain, but she drove both her legs in opposite directions and caught on the ridges. A putrescent smell washed over her, and beneath that was the dizzying fragrance of some gas: the fluid which the wyrm must strike for fire. The organ that held it was below, but she did not know in which way, for it was dark and as Níðhöggr turned her understanding of the directions turned.

She pushed her thumb into the sword hilt, but she could not make out the guiding pressure. If Níðhöggr, bearing her, walked back— Had she lost it? Fear flooded her. Sif shoved her left foot harder into the side of his throat, and the explosive agony that tore up her side cleared her mind. Her stomach flipped. There was something she was forgetting. She felt it nibbling at her under the pain and the sickness churning in her belly.

What had Verðandi said to her? A charm in her left hand. She'd used Loki's charm up, but that, she remembered suddenly, had been her right hand. Her left hand.

"Take my blessing with you," the queen had said, "that you shall find your way even in the darkest of places," and her wrist had beat with warmth under Frigg's steady hand.

"Oh," Sif gasped. The stink choked her. She coughed and in the coughing snapped, "Be light, damn you."

A flickering in her eye, so soft perhaps she imagined it; then her left hand burst with light. The inside of Níðhöggr's throat was a lurid pink, like tenderized flesh, and nearly delicate bones lined it. A thing like a bladder fluttered some thirty, thirty-two feet beneath her, to the left which she had thought up. The organ.

She began to slide down to it. Her leg throbbed and threatened to give. Under her left hand, Níðhöggr's flesh was warm and warming, and it was slick as with blood. The organ began to inflate, thickening: he meant to cook her in his throat.

Sif slid faster, her feet ghosting over each pair of ribs. Her left knee popped again and she bit back a snarl, for the leg spasmed and pulled away from the side. She drove her foot out again. The pain rolled over her in waves now.

The angle began to change: he was lowering his head. She'd another twenty feet to go.

"Fuck it," she snapped, and she dragged her legs back in and slid the rest of the way down. Her sword jolted in her grasp; she clutched it tightly. The organ swelled, enlarging both truly and in her reckoning as she neared it. His throat was slick, hot and wet as she raced faster down it.

Left leg already wrecked, she thought, and she threw it out to brake. If the joint hadn't broken before, it did so now; she felt the snap in her hip. Sif slammed to the right, and her shoulder smashed into a line of bone. The organ was nearly full now; it blocked the passage to his belly. In a moment, he would let the gas out up his throat in a controlled stream.

Sif leaned hard into the right side of his throat and tucked her legs up to her chest. With his throat turning down, it was easier to maneuver so her head was closest to the organ. Arranged, she jerked the mesh down over her legs, her feet. She hoped it was enough.

A soft hissing started, and Sif thought of how very badly she intended to shake Loki and then to kiss him, and she cleaved the organ with her blade.

The gas erupted. A shining fluid vomited out of the torn organ, then everything but Sif was fire, and it enveloped her entirely. She'd a sensation of intense, consuming heat and of violent motion, then the fire punched her through Níðhöggr's teeth and she fell freely into the cold spring. Her left leg bounced and Sif screamed, but she could not hear it for Níðhöggr's awful shrieking or the sudden and wild snapping of fat and bones in a wildfire.

Sif raised her face. Heat washed over her skin. She stared up at the wyrm, which was a silhouette, a skeleton limned in a colossal and undying blaze. Níðhöggr, burning, was consumed from within. He staggered and collapsed, clawing at his throat, into the heart of the spring. The wave threw Sif against the shore. The fog burned away, and steam began to rise in white, hot plumes where Níðhöggr died.

Her leg numbed. The cold of the water was not so bad now. Sword, she thought abruptly. She had to cut off its head, take it, take it to— She splashed about in the shallows, but of course she'd lost her sword.

Níðhöggr wailed, then the underside of his twisting throat burst like a blister. Blood gushed in waves through the flames, which burned only hotter for it. The steam thickened. If that didn't kill the damned thing, she thought, her sword surely couldn't.

Sif made to rise. Her knee buckled beneath her, and she landed in the shallows again. Her thumb pulled at her, the charm dragging and dragging. She felt it now, clear as a song in her ear. Loki, calling to her.

"Hold," she snarled at her leg, " _hold_."

Three more tries then she got her balance on the shore. Her left leg dragged, heavy. If she'd her sword—but that was lost to Níðhöggr, who guttered, dead, in the waters. Sif looked over her shoulder. Smoke and steam rose entwined from the burnt-out corpse. His tail looped in the waters until it vanished. If she could have but brought his head to Thor, she thought wistfully, how he would have roared at the size of such a beast.

The pulse beat and beat in her thumb.

"I know," Sif said. "I know. I'm going."

Dragging her leg, dripping as she went, she walked on, on through the clearing fog, on through the brush and the wyrm-bitten roots, on to Loki where he dreamed, alone.





	11. 9.

_i: loki dreaming._

The universe dragged on. Loki laid on his back, surrounded by leaves and the hum of the wind as it brushed through them, and watched the stars as they moved through the sky. He thought of little, only now and then of Sif, how her hair shone, her hands, her edged smiles, the way she turned her head when she laughed, or of small things he had loved: sand between his toes, rain on his face, snow caught in his hand.

"Ah," said Yggdrasill.

He was too comfortable and too empty to move. Out in the black of space a star consumed itself from the outside in. He watched it as it died. There was a sadness to it. He allowed it. The spot where the star died collected dust.

Loki stirred.

"What's 'ah'?"

"Sif," said Yggdrasill.

Sif, Sif, Sif: a drop of water on his tongue. He rose onto his elbows and looked back to Yggdrasill, where she stood in her own shadow. Her face shone both pale and dark, dappled as with sunlight and night. Like a leaf opening, her smile unfurled. Yggdrasill held her hands up. Her fingers curled.

"She has slain the wyrm Níðhöggr," said Yggdrasill, "whose hide no blade can pierce."

"That's no surprise," said Loki. He laid down again. Lightly, he folded his hands across his chest. "Sif is second-best only to Thor. In the sunburnt lands, she slew more wyrms than Thor and I together."

"She has done me a great service," said Yggdrasill. "Níðhöggr has plagued me since my first flowering."

He'd a song on the tip of his tongue, a poem to both tease and praise Sif; out of habit, the first rather more so than the latter. _Sif, whose face they emblazoned in the heavens, including the mole on her cheek which you can see if you look right there._ He looked idly for her face in the stars, but all he saw were stars.

"She will be with you soon," said Yggdrasill. "Are you ready?"

"To wake?" he asked. "I've tired of dreams."

"To be found," said Yggdrasill.

The leaves whispered about him. The question they proposed was thus: what prospect could be more terrifying than being alone than that of being loved?

As a child he had hid in the hollow presented by a dead tree and watched as Sif walked by, and as she walked by he had thought: _See me, find me, look at me, catch me_ , but he had said nothing; he had done nothing; he had charmed the tree so she could not find him.

Loki stared up at the stars and found nothing in them. They were only stars after all, and they were far from him. The light they offered was dim and their absence could not cool.

"Are you ready now?" asked Yggdrasill again, and her voice was a murmur, a song fading in his ear as he rose out of dreams into waking.

Another song came to him, and in it Sif said, "Loki."




 

 _ii: the waking._

Marshy land took over away from the spring. Her boots made sucking noises when she lifted them. She winced with each step; the drag on her left leg was tremendous, the pull excruciating. Mud splattered her legs. The land began to slope upwards. She pressed on.

The fog had cleared. That was something. And just in time, too, for the dimming light had turned to shadows. Night was coming at last to Yggdrasill. Sif thought she could safely say this had been the longest day of her life. She set her hand on her left thigh and flinching, drew it back. The pulse in her knee beat counterpoint to the pulse in her thumb.

In the dusk, she saw glimmers, will-o'-the-wisps set loose in a swamp. Like soap bubbles they gleamed iridescent, and she thought of the bubbles the cold spring had spat at her as she knelt over it. Perhaps it fed the marsh. Perhaps her eyes were only playing tricks on her.

Then she reached the top of the rise, and before her stretched a great, muddy field out of which wet bubbles coalesced and sauntered toward the branches of Yggdrasill. As from a distance she heard whispers, shouts, laughter, a child shrieking, and in the bubbles tiny figures moved without shadow or reason. Music played somewhere, just a snippet of a song, then it passed out of hearing.

Sif took a step down and another, and another. A bubble drifted as if blown to her. Without thinking, she lifted her hand to it, and it broke against her thumb. When it broke, a voice, Loki's voice, said clearly: "Sif."

Nausea rolled through her: the pain in her leg had flared. Sif stumbled and caught her weight on her hands in the mud. White mud, squishing up between her fingers. Slowly, she forced herself back to her feet. The pressure in her thumb had gone. She'd time enough to think, _no_ , then she raised her head.

Loki lay half-submerged, not five feet before her. Strange lights played across his face, thrown by a bubble which had grown out of the mud and engulfed him. How had she missed him? Then she lunged for him and fell beside him in the mud, and the bubble popped beneath her hands. Her knee screamed at her. She ignored it.

"Loki," she said. She grabbed for him; she clasped his face. Her fingertips itched; his skin was blue and very cold, and what did she care? Mud had spattered his cheeks like bits of web.

"Loki," she said again, raggedly. "Loki. Wake up. I kept my promise. Wake up now, damn you, you—" She knew no curse, no endearment strong enough.

He was so still, but what did that mean with Loki, who had made stillness an art? She petted his brow, his cheek, stroked her thumb over his left eye. Not even a flicker beneath the lids. Did he breathe? She saw in a moment that she had come too late, that he would never wake, that he was lost to her as he had always been lost to her because of his fear and her pride and his pride and her fear, and Sif dug her fingers into his cheeks and bent and kissed him brutally across his mouth.

If she'd borrowed magic still in her, she would have given all of it to him; she would have pulled all the charms out of her flesh and stuffed them inside him. She would have brought him water from Mímir's well and prayed that it would heal whatever had broken in him when he fell. She had none of those things. All she had to give to Loki was Sif.

She kissed him again, punishing, her teeth pressed flat into his lips, and her mouth burned; her hands burned. Her eyes burned most of all.

"You must wake up," she whispered into his mouth. "I've caught you, so you must do what I tell you, and I am telling you to wake up. Loki."

An oscillation in his cheek, under her thumb. Sif withdrew, just far enough to see if his eyes moved. He drew sudden breath, a huge intake as if he'd forgotten how to breathe, then his eyes flew open and he choked on it.

Sif laughed and cradled his face in her hands and bent, again, to kiss him, to kiss his lips, his slightly curved nose, his cheeks, the fold of skin between his nose and his mouth, all of him. His hand fluttered at her shoulder. He rose into her kiss, his lips chasing after hers. Under his fingers, a warmth spread through her shoulder, through her skin, and the numbness in her face vanished; the ache in her knee went away. Clever, she meant to say, but she kissed him again.

"I never said," she managed at last.

She ran her fingers over his cheekbone, that broad ridge. His eyes were huge, so red, and she wanted, wildly, to kiss them, too. He caught her fingers and brought them to his lips. He kissed them fiercely and said, "What? What didn't you say? You shouldn't start something if you don't intend to finish." There was a hitch in his voice; it took the humor out. He hadn't blinked, though his eyes unfocused once.

"What I wanted to say," she said, but it was too large. It was too much, suddenly, here with Loki trembling beneath her hands, with his lips so thin under her fingers. Loki. Not a dream and not a ghost, but Loki.

He looked at her. What did he see? No more, she thought, than what she saw in him. He ran his fingers gently down her wrist then up again. His hand close about her hand.

"Sif," he said. He touched her face. His fingers were wet with mud. He was _real_ , she thought. Perhaps that was what he thought, too. In the distance a bubble popped and a snatch of song spilled out then died.

"Sif," he said again. He leaned into her. His thumb rubbed her chin. "You found me. You found me. You came. Sif," and there was so much there in only her name she could hardly breathe enough to say,

"Of course I found you. How could I not? Did you think I wouldn't come for you?"

The yearning in his eyes, how he held onto her wrist as if he thought she would go.

"I hoped you would," he said. "I wanted so badly for you to come. Sif. Sif," he said.

"I love you, too." It fell out of her. "That's what I should have told you. I should have told you long ago—"

"You mustn't blame yourself," said Loki, and he smiled almost without artifice. If it was not to his usual standard, it was, at least, his. His fingers curled at her jaw. The scrape of a nail was blunted by the mud.

He was alive, she thought, he was _alive_ , and she slanted her mouth over his because she did not know how to say it, how to put it in words how very glad she was to feel his skin on her fingers, to touch her fingertips to his curls, to feel him against her as he rose out of the mud and wrapped his long arms about her.

They parted. Loki nuzzled her cheek. She leaned into his brow, his shoulders, the coolness of him. All around them bubbles sang and laughed and wept for joy and for sorrow and for fear, dreams loosed from Yggdrasill's roots. Loki exhaled, shuddering. She clasped her arms around his neck and held him, just held him.

"We should go," she said.

"I agree," said Loki, muffled. He brushed his lips over her jaw. "I never want to see another tree again."

"And we are to go, that we never see trees?" she asked him. "A desert?"

His hands tightened at her back. The mesh pulled, knotted under his fingers. His breath tickled her cheek once, again.

"Wherever you want to go," he said. "I will go with you. Even if there are trees."

The name was on her tongue. She swallowed it.

"Midgard," Sif said. She pressed her face to his jaw. "Midgard."

"Then Midgard," said Loki, and he wound about her; he held her and he breathed. He _breathed_. Alive.

The future unspooled before her. She saw it, a hot thing spilling smoke, and she knew it; she knew it would not be simple or easy, for when was peacemaking ever peaceful, but she had Loki and when she thought of that hot thing coming toward her she thought of Loki beside her, his cool hand in her own.

Night had come to Yggdrasill. The shadows lengthened, swallowing them. Loki turned and kissed her ear, softly. In the boughs of Yggdrasill, a pale moon showed, a white moon newly full.

"Are you ready?" she asked Loki.

He touched her cheek and said, "Yes."




 

 _iii: memory: sif._

The palace loomed before Sif. Though she'd come to it many times before, countless times, nearly every day for the last who knew how many years, she had never thought it so grand or so frightening. It _imposed_ in a way her home did not. Not your home anymore, she thought crossly. Then her anger faded and as it faded she felt herself small and unwanted again.

How her father had raged that morn, as he had raged every morn since the queen's invitation. At least he hadn't raged at her this time. He hadn't so much as looked at her all week.

"If she goes, she will never come back," he shouted at her mother.

Sif had crouched on the stairs and looked around the bend at her parents, their silhouettes thrown by the early morning lanterns to play hugely against the wall. She had watched as her mother, her small mother, drew upright—on the wall, she fairly towered—and shouted back.

"If she doesn't come back, it will be because of you!"

Sif had never heard her mother shout before, certainly never at Lieff, and her chest ached to hear it for her mother did it for Sif. And what did Sif do? She cowered on the stairs, like a babe, like a child too small to know itself.

"You know what this means for her," Astra went on, "to be invited by the queen, to study at the palace like a nobleman's daughter—"

"I'd rather her go as a wife," he snapped, "not a shield-maiden. I did not use what influence I have to get her in the company of the princes for her to learn to fight like a common soldier."

"And what of an uncommon soldier?" her mother shot back. "The queen said—"

"I don't care what the queen said!" her father thundered. Astra fell back; her shadow wavered and fell, and Sif would have stood to shout down at her father had he not then said, "The queen knows not what she speaks of; her head is full of stuff."

Sif pressed her hands to her mouth. Her heart pounded, and she was hot, hot all over with rage for the queen, who was beautiful and wise and true, and with fear, for what if Heimdall listened? What if he heard? The word _treason_ rose in her like a corpse in a pond.

The silence pressed on her. In a moment Heimdall's messenger would be at their door, she thought; but the silence persisted for long, awful moments. Her mother's shadow twisted. She'd looked away.

"I'm done with this," said Lieff. "I'm done with Sif. Let her go to the palace. I have no daughter. Tell her that."

Her father passed out of the hall. Sif watched her mother's silhouette as it bent and changed. Astra pressed a hand to her face, and her back bowed in a tight, hurting line. She breathed out softly, and Sif turned and fled up the stairs to her room.

Her mother had fetched her later, after the sun had risen over the horizon. Astra had stood in the doorway and feigned delight at the cleanliness of Sif's room, as if it weren't bare, stripped of Sif.

"Look at how you've cleaned this room," said Astra. "If only the queen had invited you sooner."

Sif set her bags down at the door and threw her arms about her mother's shoulders. She hid her face in her mother's collar. Already she was almost taller than Astra. Her throat stung. She whispered, "I'll miss you."

Her mother petted her hair gently, her fingers sliding through Sif's locks as easily as they always had.

"Look at you," she said. "Acting as if we'll never see each other again. I expect you to visit once a week. Letters every day."

"I can't write that many letters," Sif protested.

"Every other day," her mother conceded, and she'd bent to kiss Sif's brow when Sif held her tighter.

Now Sif stood alone before the palace, like she'd told her mother she wanted to. "All grown up," Astra said, but she'd let her go.

The steps rose endlessly before her. Her heart was a bird fighting to break out of her chest. No daughter of Lieff's, she thought. She'd hoped it would strengthen her resolve, but it only made her chest hurt more. What was it she had wanted so much to shout at her father that morning as she watched him from the stairs? She tasted it in the back of her mouth. _What of me can you not love?_

"It's bad luck to cry when you move into a new home," said Loki at her back.

Sif jumped and turned, fists ready. He smiled nicely at her and shivered around to her front. His tunic was neatly pressed to his shoulders, his collar, his waist. She didn't know where he'd come from: the walk up to the palatial doors was one devoid of ornamentation. The palace was decoration enough.

"Of course, I wouldn't know much of that," he added. "I've never had to move."

Sif set her hands on her hips and looked down her nose at him. It had been easier to do before he'd got so tall. Thor still straggled behind, shortest of all if thickest through, but Loki had sprung up like a weed over the winter. Their eyes met, level now. He'd flakes of yellow in the pale green of his eyes.

"What do you want?" she demanded.

"Only to extend my heartfelt welcome to our new guest," he said smoothly.

She ran her gaze up him. Loki, ever cool, hardly squirmed. "You've straightened your hair again."

"You've softened your tongue," he said back. "But not so much as mine." Then he dropped into a little, mocking bow, bending low at the waist, and it mocked because he was not supposed to bow so low to anyone but the king and queen. He smiled up at her. "Welcome, Sif Lieffsdottir, to my most humble home."

She scowled, but it pinched too tightly. He'd made her want to laugh. Loki's smile sharpened. Sif bunched her lips.

"Are you going to help me with my bags or not?"

Loki straightened. He flicked his fingers, dismissive. "Leave them. A servant will get them."

"I can carry my own bags," she said indignantly.

"Then why ask for my help?"

"Because you're _different_ ," she said. "Where's Thor?"

Loki snagged one of her bags and hoisted it gracefully to his shoulder.

"Sleeping in," he said. "You know how he is. Big day. Important guest. He's drooling into his pillow. Mother will get mad at him when she knows he didn't get up to greet you."

"You shouldn't try to get him into trouble," said Sif.

They walked together up the steps. Loki snorted and said, "He gets me into enough trouble. Why shouldn't I return the favor?"

"Because you're smarter," she said bluntly.

Loki showed his teeth in a feral sort of smile, which was as close as he'd come to laughing, she knew. He'd laughed in days before when she joked of Thor, but he'd gone quiet recently in strange ways.

"Coming from one half of the bash berserkers," he said, "that's quite the compliment. Why are you so early? You weren't supposed to come until later. Mother had a little ceremony planned."

"Change of plans," Sif said. She stared ahead at the doors. "My father was busy. This was the only time they could drop me."

Loki was looking at her in that studious way of his, as if she were one of his absurdly heavy books. He said nothing, though, and when they got to the doors he stopped to press his hand to the sun at the center. The doors parted for them.

"I can't wait for you and Thor to make a mess of everything," he said.

"I can't wait for you to stop being so rude," said Sif.

He smirked sidelong at her. His lashes fell low over his eyes. That was a new trick of his, too, a way of sneering with his eyes in place of his mouth.

"Oh, Sif," he said, "I am never anything but polite to _you_."

"If you're so polite, then show me to my room," she said, and she marched ahead of him.

"You fit in already," Loki called.

He caught up with her easily enough—why had he got so _tall_ , that's what she wanted to know—and smiling, mocking, he strode on the verge of a jog before her, which was as clear a challenge for her to catch him as any she'd seen.

Sif tucked her bag under her arm and raced him down the hall.




 

 _iv: the hawk, the eagle, and the squirrel._

"Don't move so," Veðrfölnir hissed. "It's bad enough trying to get comfortable in here."

"Sorry," said the eagle, though she didn't sound much. Carefully she brought her wing down again, tucking it about Veðrfölnir. "Better?"

The eagle's breast rose and fall against Veðrfölnir's head, steady as her heartbeat. The shadow she made with her wing was dark and and warm and sweetly so. Veðrfölnir leaned against her, but only just.

"I suppose it will do," she said.

Veðrfölnir bent to pick at her own breast. The feathers were all a mess, bloodied and pressed to one side or the other. The scratch bit at her. Would that she'd clawed the slithering shit's eyes out before he'd knocked her off. He'd raked a line of dots and dashes down her belly and clipped her left foot. She nursed that, even sitting.

"You fought well," said the eagle.

She scowled. "Not well enough. I'm out of practice. Used to be I could have taken a wyrm half again as big as Níðhöggr, the fuck."

"I remember," said the eagle. She turned her head, and the eagle's beak slicked over Veðrfölnir's brow. "Sleep now."

"Only if you stop talking," said Veðrfölnir gruffly, but she turned her head to the eagle's grooming. The eagle preened, cleaning the grime and blood out of Veðrfölnir's feathers as Veðrfölnir first dozed then lightly slept.

In her dream, she was a fledgling again, and she was lost in the vastness of Yggdrasill. Her wings were too short to catch the thermals properly and she sank in gradations, from the higher boughs to the middling boughs then down further to the roots. Níðhöggr waited for her. She saw his fangs, his eyes gleaming and spinning. He would snatch her up. She pumped her wings but they were too damned _weak_.

Then a cage closed about her, huge claws bearing her up, up, away from Níðhöggr and the earth. The eagle, who never flew, said, "Caught you." Ratatoskr said, "Níðhöggr is dead."

She roused, unwilling, to their voices. Veðrfölnir blinked blearily out from the shelter of the eagle's wing. Ratatoskr, small as a mouse, had perched on the edge of the nest. He pulled at his whiskers and rolled his eyes.

"Oh," he said, "the other lady wakes."

"I have a name, vermin," Veðrfölnir mumbled. Sleep made her soft. She would have to chase him about later.

"I'll use it when you remember mine," said Ratatoskr. He stared with interest at her feathered breast. "What an awful scratch you've got, my lady."

"She fought Níðhöggr," said the eagle. Gently she nipped at Veðrfölnir's forefeathers.

Veðrfölnir turned her head away. The eagle laughed.

"Fought and lost," said Veðrfölnir.

"Better warriors than you have rotted in his gut," said Ratatoskr sympathetically. Before Veðrfölnir could decide whether or not it was worth getting up to bite his nose off, he went on to say, "But one of them finally got the better of him."

Veðrfölnir stared at him. In her dream— But that had been a dream.

"Níðhöggr is dead?"

"He is dead," said the eagle. "I have looked. I have seen."

"That warrior from Asgard slew him," said Ratatoskr, "the one you saved."

"That skinny thing!" Veðrfölnir scoffed. "How could she have slain Níðhöggr?"

Ratatoskr wriggled his tail. His eyes narrowed. Airily he said, "I suppose she just used her brain," then he dove off the nest.

"Stay still," said the eagle placidly as Veðrfölnir struggled to rise. "Your cut will open. You need to rest."

"Yes, please," Ratatoskr called from below, "listen to the eagle. She's very wise."

"It is true," the eagle agreed.

Veðrfölnir fought still for balance. Her leg ached terribly, in that sore way of an old wound. How long had she slept? There was something else odd about standing, though, something she couldn't place; then it came to her in the stillness.

"Yggdrasill's stopped shaking," she said, surprised.

Ratatoskr popped his head up again. "Her blessed treesiness stopped ages ago. You missed it."

Veðrfölnir craned forward to look up to the eagle, whose eyes had turned to the stars.

"What does it mean?"

"Yggdrasill rests," said the eagle. "Níðhöggr no longer plagues her. She dreams."

"And what does _that_ mean?" asked Veðrfölnir, exasperated. Trust the eagle to lose her reason in stargazing. Dreams! And what could that signify, with war coming and fire on the horizon?

"I don't yet know," the eagle said. She looked to Veðrfölnir and tipped her head to one side, which was her way of saying things were all right. "But in time."

Ratatoskr translated: "What she means is find your patience, Lady Hawk."

"Fuck off," said Veðrfölnir without heat. She was as yet tired and standing had taken more out of her than she liked. Níðhöggr's poison worked through her. That would pass, in time.

"We will watch," said the eagle. "We will see." She fixed her eye on Veðrfölnir. "You must rest now."

"Listen to her," said Ratatoskr. He peered over the edge, his eyes huge and dark. "You're no good to anyone if you can't so much as stand."

"You're no good at all," said Veðrfölnir.

"You are both good to me," said the eagle. "Now sleep. Let Yggdrasill dream."

In time, Veðrfölnir slept.




 

 _v: yggdrasill dreaming._

Yggdrasill, of you we sing. Of you we sing, Yggdrasill.

We give our song to you. We give our hands to you. We give our breath to you. We give our blood to you. We give our dreams to you.

Yggdrasill, of what do you dream? Múspellsheimr has woken. The sons of Múspell have woken. Their fires have woken. Do you dream of their soldiers marching, their torches held high to burn you down and through your ashes open the way to noble Asgard, faithful Asgard, Asgard the terrible? Do you dream of how the flames will come upon you? Do you dream of the Bifröst as it broke, of Asgard's power breaking and all the realms freed to make war or peace amongst themselves, of Múspellsheimr's vengeance sparked in the breaking?

Or do you dream of something else? Do you dream of something green, something sweet, something cool? As fires kindle, do you dream instead of rain?

Níðhöggr the undying is dead. Loki the hunted is caught. Sif the pursuing is victorious. At the well Urðarbrunnr, the three norns Urðr and Verðandi and Skuld weave. At the well Mímisbrunnr, the giant Mímir drinks. At the well Hvergelmir, the wyrm Níðhöggr rots. Who among them knows the future? Who among them can know it? In the water, ripples. In the earth, cracks. In the air, storms.

In her hands, Sif bears Loki. In his hands, Loki bears Sif. Out of your roots, they climb. Out of memory, they climb. Out of dreams, they climb. Loki climbs. Sif climbs. Together, they climb.

Yggdrasill the undreaming dreams.





End file.
